LENA

He said it and the pen stopped.

I want to be accurate about the pen because the pen stopping was the first thing, the immediate and involuntary first thing, the specific and physical response of a body that had received a piece of information and had paused its operations before the mind had weighed in about whether pausing was the appropriate response. My hand stopped. The pen was on the page, mid-letter, and my hand had simply stopped with it in the specific and complete way of a thing interrupted at its root.

I looked up.

He was looking at the notebook.

He had been looking at the notebook...