The room they called mine was a carefully preserved exhibit. It was beautiful in a sterile, art-directed way—the kind of beauty found in high-end design magazines, all muted tones, plush textures, and not a single object out of place. It felt like a stage set waiting for an actress who had forgotten her lines.
Damian lingered in the doorway, a silent curator. "You spent a lot of time in here," he offered, his voice carefully neutral. "Reading, mostly."
I stepped inside, my senses straining for a spark, a scent, a feeling of *mine*. There was nothing. Just the faint, clean smell of lavender linen spray and old, sun-warmed wood.
My eyes swept the room. A writing desk sat beneath the window, its surface bare except for a single, expensive-looking fountain pen resting on a leather blotter. The shelves held books—classics, poetry, art histories—their spines uncreased, their pages likely untouched for years. It was the room of a well-educated ghost.
Then I saw it. Tucked not on a shelf, but half-slid beneath the bed's dust ruffle, a corner of worn, brown leather peeked out. An anomaly in the perfection.
Without thinking, I crossed the room and knelt, pulling it free. It was a journal. Not the elegant, blue one from the library. This was smaller, thicker, its cover scuffed and softened from use. The leather was warm, almost alive in my hands.
A shadow fell over me. Damian had moved. He now stood just inside the room, his posture rigid. "Where did you find that?"
"It was under the bed." I stood, clutching the journal. It felt significant. Heavy with secrets. "Is this mine, too?"
He didn't answer immediately. His gaze was fixed on the book as if it were a venomous snake. "You… had several. That one is older."
Older. From before the blank years? Hope, sharp and painful, lanced through me. I opened the cover.
The handwriting was undeniably mine—a younger, looser, more exuberant script. The entries were a torrent of thoughts: excitement about a painting sold, frustration with a professor, detailed descriptions of walks in the rain, passionate declarations about art and life. I was *vibrant* on these pages. Alive.
I flipped through, devouring glimpses of a self I recognized in spirit if not in memory. The entries grew more frequent, more intense. And then, about a third of the way through the book, they began to change.
The handwriting grew tighter, more controlled. The exuberance faded, replaced by observation. Lists appeared. Observations about people, about social dynamics, about… Damian.
*Damian Hart. CEO, Hart Industries. 27. Intense. Unreadable. Asked me to dinner. Why?*
*Dinner. He listens. Actually listens. Doesn't just wait for his turn to speak. It's unsettling.*
*He's not what the papers say. There's a quietness in him. A wound.*
I turned the page, my heart in my throat. The entries became sparser, but deeper. Less about the external world, more about the puzzle of him. About the dizzying, terrifying pull I felt.
Then, I reached the last written page.
The date was just over three years ago. The entry was short, only three lines, written in a script so firm it had scored the paper:
*He asked. I said yes. Everything changes now. Or does it?*
Beneath it, a single, stark sentence, underlined twice:
*God, I hope I'm not making a mistake.*
My breath froze. I stared at the words. The hope, the fear, the monumental leap of faith. This was the moment before the void.
With trembling fingers, I turned the page.
Blank.
I turned another. And another.
Empty, white pages. Dozens of them. A silent desert where the story of my marriage should have been.
The vibrant, analytical, hopeful voice was gone. Snuffed out. Not with a dramatic finale, but with an absence so complete it was louder than any scream.
A soft sound escaped me—a gasp of pure, uncomprehending loss.
Damian was at my side in an instant. "Aria—"
"Why?" I whispered, holding the open journal out to him, the blank pages a glaring accusation. "Why did I stop? You said I wrote every day. Where is it? Where are the wedding plans? The fights? The quiet mornings? Where is *us*?"
He looked at the empty pages, his face pale. "I don't know."
"You have to know!" The cry was torn from me. "You were there! Was it so terrible? Was *I* so terrible that I had nothing left to say?"
"No!" The word burst from him, fierce and immediate. He took the journal from my limp hands and closed it, as if he could shut away the pain it contained. "It wasn't like that. You were… happy. At first."
"At first," I echoed hollowly. "And then?"
He ran a hand over his face, a gesture of profound weariness. "And then life became… complicated. You became quieter. More withdrawn. You said writing felt like trying to describe a color you couldn't see anymore."
The metaphor was so specific, so devastatingly poetic, it felt true. A color I couldn't see. Had he watched me fade? Had he watched the woman in this journal—curious, passionate, alive—slowly become the silent ghost of these blank pages?
I sank onto the edge of the too-perfect bed, the strength gone from my legs. "I disappeared, didn't I? Even before the accident. I just… stopped being *me*."
He knelt before me, his eyes level with mine. For the first time, he didn't look like the powerful Damian Hart. He looked haunted. "You were still you. You were just… in pain. And I didn't know how to reach you. I tried. I tried everything I knew. But the harder I tried, the further you retreated."
"What was the pain?" I pleaded, desperate for an enemy I could name, a grief I could understand.
He shook his head, his eyes full of a sorrow so deep it seemed to swallow him. "That's the heart of it, Aria. I never fully knew. You stopped telling me. You stopped telling your journal. You just… carried it. Until you couldn't carry it anymore."
The unspoken words hung in the air: *Until you got in the car that night.*
I looked from his anguished face to the closed journal on the bed between us. The truth wasn't in the blank pages. The truth *was* the blank pages. The silence was the story.
The vibrant, observant woman had fallen in love with a complicated man, and somewhere in the labyrinth of that love, she had lost her voice. She had become a wife in a beautiful museum, her inner world shrinking to nothing, documented only by an ever-widening margin of white, empty paper.
I picked up the journal again, tracing the faint indentation of those last, fearful words. *I hope I'm not making a mistake.*
Had she decided, in the end, that she had?
"I want to be alone," I said, my voice flat.
He hesitated, searching my face. Then he stood. "I'll be downstairs if you need me."
He left, closing the door with a soft click that felt more final than a slam.
I lay back on the bed, the old journal pressed to my chest like a shield. I had come looking for memories. I had found a funeral for a self I never knew.
The blank pages weren't just empty. They were a tombstone.
And the man who loved me—who loved her—was the keeper of the grave, living in the beautiful, silent mansion they had built together, waiting for a ghost to speak again.