As I Recall

Chapter 1

My husband insists that keeping a journal is good for me. He's been buying me little journals and leaving them around the house, in a not so subtle way of encouraging me to use it.

A diary, I called it—how dreadfully ordinary the word sounds upon the tongue. I told him once that it seemed rather trite, and he only smiled that knowing smile of his, the one that makes me feel simultaneously foolish and cherished, as though he has already decided what is best for me.

I don't know why I was so against it. And now that I have, I should not feel so secretive, and yet here I am, writing furtively, as though this were something forbidden. Perhaps because if Elias asked to see it, I would hesitate. And I never hesitate with him. I don't think I know how.

 
Dinner was pleasant enough this evening.

He carved the roast with his usual precision, pouring wine into my glass with such care that it nearly seemed ceremonial. He spoke of his patients, of the papers he is preparing for publication. Elias spoke of his work in that low, thoughtful voice of his, his words were deliberate and heavy with importance. I tried to listen, but sometimes the technicalities slip past me like a tide. I watched his hands instead—the elegant way they move, precise even as he gestures casually across the table. A surgeon's hands.

And now, here I sit, in this dim room with only the lamplight for company, I am in the smaller bedroom now, one of the many belonging to the estate. However this particular one I come to on occasion when I feel restless or when my head aches too deeply to share a bed. Elias does not protest; he only looks at me a little too long when I tell him, as if he wants to say something but chooses not to. Perhaps that is why I have chosen it tonight—not to sleep, but to write.

I hear him below me now, in his study, I can hear, faintly, the deliberate turning of his pages, the scratch of his pen, the crackle of the fire he keeps lit no matter the season. He is never idle. Even when the house is quiet, his mind persists in its endless occupation.
He corrects me whenever I call it a diary, reminding me that journals are clinical, useful, disciplined—unlike the girlish secrecy of diaries. He says it will steady my thoughts, sharpen my mind, and help with the treatments.

The treatments are for my migraines—terrible, blinding things that come without warning. My grandmother suffered from them, too. She was a lovely woman... at least, I believe she was. Strange as it is, my heart assures me that I loved her, yet my memory offers me nothing but shadows. I cannot conjure her face, the sound of her voice, the things she liked. I tell myself this is only the illness. The headaches. The reason I am prescribed these tablets, this routine, this journal. Elias assures me it is nothing more than that. And I believe him. I must believe him. He is my husband after all.

i hope that If I write it down here, perhaps it will not slip away. Perhaps I will see the pattern clearly in time. For if something in me ever does go missing, at least here I might notice. 

Or perhaps Elias is right, and all of this will pass, and the words I write tonight will seem only the ramblings of a woman with tired eyes and a head that aches.
Either way, I'll keep writing.

And its certainly not the case that I mistrust my husband. He is devoted, unfailing, ever watchful of me. But... There are moments. Moments when his lips taste faintly antiseptic, as though I am kissing some sterile echo of the man I adore. Moments when the world around me, though familiar, seems curiously estranged, as though I am walking through a place recalled only in fragments of dream. And worst of all, there are moments—fleeting, terrible moments—when the figure before me, the man who swore to love and cherish me, no longer appears as my handsome, steadfast husband...

...but as something else.

Something colder.
Something that patiently watches.
Something that wears his face like a mask.