The Notebook

Anya was writing when the world changed.

Not the whole world. Just her corner of it. The page in front of her, the blue lines of her notebook, the specific pressure of her pen against paper. She was documenting the Case of the Missing Remote Control — a minor mystery, category three at best, but mysteries were mysteries and the Sleuth Log did not discriminate.

Suspects: Grandma (likely, she was the last one watching Indian Matchmaker*), the dog (possible, though he lacks opposable thumbs), or a poltergeist (unlikely, Grandma does not believe in poltergeists and her word is law in this house).*

Verdict pending further investigation.

She underlined pending twice.

The kitchen smelled like coffee and the cinnamon bun Grandma had warmed up for her at seven that morning. Outside the open window, a kiskadee was arguing with itself in the breadfruit tree. The fan on the counter turned its slow head from one corner of the room to the other and back. It was a Saturday in June, in Port of Spain, and nothing had been wrong with the day until this exact moment.

The front door slammed.

“Anya!”

Reyah’s voice arrived before Reyah did — it always did. Anya had timed it once. Seven seconds between the sound of Reyah at the gate and Reyah in the room. Seven seconds of warning, which was seven seconds more than anyone else in her life gave her.

“In the kitchen,” Anya called.

Reyah appeared in the doorway, already talking. She was wearing shorts that had once been navy blue and were now the specific faded colour of things that had been washed too many times and loved too much to throw away. Her hair was escaping its ponytail. Her sneakers were untied.

“You’re not going to believe what happened at the market.”

“The Savannah market?”

“There’s only one market at the Savannah, Anya.”

“There’s also the farmers’ market in Saint James on Saturdays —”

“Nobody cares about the farmers’ market in Saint James on Saturdays. This is serious.”

Anya set down her pen. She had learned, over two years of friendship, that the fastest way to get Reyah to explain something was to stop talking and look at her. Not impatient. Just waiting. The waiting made Reyah fill the space.

Reyah filled it.

“Mr. Harrinarine’s wife. Mrs. Harrinarine. Her wedding ring. The one from her grandmother. It’s gone. Someone took it. From their stall. From the lockbox.”

Anya processed this.

“The lockbox has a key.”

“Exactly.”

“Only family members have keys.”

“Exactly.”

Anya picked her pen back up. Not to write — to hold. The weight of it helped her think.

The Harrinarine stall had been at the Savannah market for as long as Anya could remember. Her grandmother bought their currant rolls every Saturday. Their lockbox was the size of a shoebox, painted dark green, kept under the counter behind a roll of plastic bags. Anya had seen it a hundred times and never thought about it once, because that was the kind of thing children didn’t think about until they had to.

“Did you see this happen or did someone tell you?”

“Someone told me. Simone called. Her mother was at the market buying provisions. Simone went with her. She saw Mrs. Harrinarine crying.”

Anya waited.

“And?”

“And Simone said something was wrong. Not just the ring. Something about how Mr. Harrinarine was acting. She said we should come.”

Anya looked at the clock on the microwave. 10:47 AM. Saturday. The market would be busy until at least two.

“Where’s Simone now?”

“Waiting for us at the roti stand.”

“The roti stand has the best —”

“Anya. Focus.”

Anya was focused. She was always focused. That was the problem — she was so focused on what people said that she sometimes missed what they didn’t say. And Reyah was not telling her something. Anya could feel the not-telling the way she could feel weather coming.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Reyah shifted her weight. The kitchen tile was cool under her sneakers. She looked at the fan, then at the breadfruit tree through the window, then at Anya.

“Simone also said that when she asked Mrs. Harrinarine what happened, Mrs. Harrinarine looked at Mr. Harrinarine before she answered.”

“That’s not unusual. Married people look at each other.”

“She looked at him like she was asking permission to be sad.”

Anya set the pen down completely.

She thought about Mr. Harrinarine. The currant rolls, sticky and warm, sold for five dollars each on Saturday mornings. The way he always pressed an extra one into her hand and said for the road as if Anya were going somewhere farther than the parking lot. The way he laughed — loud, startled, the laugh of a man who couldn’t help finding the world funnier than other men did. He had a daughter named Mariam who was studying nursing in Canada, and a son named Kareem who had come home from somewhere last year and didn’t talk about why.

She thought about his wife. Mrs. Harrinarine, who always sat on the stool behind the counter with her hands folded, who had never once been less than kind to Anya, who had a face like a closed envelope.

She thought about what it meant that his wife had to ask permission to be sad.

“Call Simone back,” Anya said. “Tell her we’re coming.”

Reyah was already texting.

Anya stood up. She closed her blue notebook — the regular one, the one for school and small mysteries — and slid it onto the kitchen shelf next to the cookbook her grandmother never used. Then she went to her room.

There was a green notebook on her desk. It was new, still smelling faintly of paper and glue. She had bought it last week from the stationery shop on Tragarete Road, the one with the bell that announced everyone, and she had not yet written anything in it. She had been waiting for the right kind of case.

She picked up the green notebook and put it in her bag.

“Anya!”

“Coming.”

The kiskadee in the breadfruit tree had stopped arguing. The fan was still turning. The cinnamon bun was still half-eaten on the kitchen counter, and Anya thought, as she left the house with Reyah trailing behind her like a comet, that she would not finish it. That when she came back to it, the bun would be cold, the morning would be over, and the green notebook would no longer be blank.

She didn’t know yet how right she was about all three.

The Savannah on a Saturday morning was its own kind of chaos.

Anya loved it. The specific, unapologetic noise of it. The way the city came to the park and spread out across the green like a picnic that had forgotten it was a picnic. Vendors called out prices. Children chased each other between the stalls. Someone’s uncle was playing parang from a Bluetooth speaker, which was not seasonally appropriate — it was June — but no one told him to turn it off because the parang reminded people of December, and December was something to hold onto in the heat.

Anya walked beside Reyah, the green notebook tucked under her arm. The remote-control investigation lived on a back page now. The front page was blank, waiting for whatever came next.

She liked the blank page more than she liked the full one. The blank page meant anything was possible. The full page meant decisions had been made.

They cut across the grass toward the western edge of the market, past the stall that sold sno-cones with condensed milk and the stall that sold tamarind balls and the stall that sold bootleg Trinidad and Tobago football jerseys. Reyah waved at three different people before they reached the roti stand. That was Reyah. She did not know everyone in the city, but she behaved as if she did, and the city, mostly, had decided to play along.

Simone was sitting on the low concrete wall that separated the market from the road, exactly where she said she’d be.

Her legs were crossed at the ankle. Her phone was in her lap. She was not looking at her phone. She was looking at a stall three rows over — a stall with a blue awning and a handwritten sign that said HARRINARINE’S BAKERY and a woman sitting on a stool behind the counter with her hands folded in her lap.

That woman was not crying now.

But her face had the specific stillness of someone who had been crying recently and was trying very hard to look like she hadn’t.

“Tell us,” Anya said, sitting down beside Simone.

Simone told them.