My dad is asleep at the table when I walk into the kitchen. His face is on a yellow notepad. I tap him on the shoulder and he stirs. I help him to his bed and tuck him in next to a snoring Murdock and Lassie.

Back in the kitchen, I grab a premade Cobb salad and a smoothie and sit down to my computer. Even with twenty-three hours of sleep, my brain still feels fatigued.

I flip open the laptop, then close it.

I reach across the table and grab my dad’s yellow legal pad, wondering if he’s made any progress. The pad is filled with my father’s indecipherable gibberish. Nearly six pages of notes, Venn diagrams, bulleted lists. I don’t know why he uses a legal pad when he doesn’t use the lines; some notes are written vertically, some diagonally. It is chaos. I try to read a couple of sentences, but it is useless. The only thing I can make out are the small horses that fill the corners of each page. (Horses are my dad’s doodle of choice. The same small inch-high horse. Wispy mane, long tail. Each one a carbon copy of the previous.)

I set the legal pad down and drag the closest pile of papers over. To my father’s credit, he’d kept the papers organized and nearly free of coffee stains.

The pages are from Jennifer’s journal.

I pick up the top page. It is eight inches high by five inches wide, the exact size I remember from the journal my father bought me in my teens. (I gave up writing after four entries. I enjoyed putting my thoughts down on paper, but it seemed I was just getting started when my hour would be over.)

I guzzle down half the protein shake, then begin reading.

::::

Bob bought me this killer camera for my sixteenth birthday. Nikon. Zoom lens. And a red carry-case. He thinks I like red. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I like green now.

He said we could paint my bedroom red if I wanted to.

Yeah, Bob, because I’m a serial killer.

No, I want to paint it SEA FOAM GREEN. Or maybe Apple Jolly Rancher. Ha, that would rock!

Anyhow, starting next week I have to split time between Bob’s new house and THE BITCH’S.

Bob said that he was lucky that my mom agreed to split custody of me and Markus, because if she wanted to, she probably could have gotten full custody, him being our stepdad and all.

I told him that I would testify. HE should get full custody. She is the one who committed ADULTERY.

I wrote that on her bathroom mirror last time I was there with a bar of soap.

HAHAHAHAHA.