My son was not in trouble.

My son was in the middle of a sacrifice, and had been, alone, for half a year, and I was only now, standing in a diner kitchen, beginning to see the size of it.

Chapter 17 — Mark’s Journal

Spread across that stainless-steel prep table, I saw now, were official medical receipts.

Small pharmacy prescription bags.

And a series of heavy legal-looking documents, stamped with the seals of a court and a county office.

But the thing in the very center, the thing that had caught my breath and held it, was a thick, leather-bound notebook that I knew, that I would have known anywhere.