Your wife is dead. The woman helping you read her diary has been in love with you for ten years.

You met Grace first. Same major, sophomore year, friends almost immediately. That autumn the two of you fell out over something small. She said she was fine, went back to her dorm and stopped speaking.

The next day her roommate came down to your dorm alone to settle it on her behalf. The two of you argued on the stone steps for half an hour and ended up laughing.

Her name was Quinn. Ten years for all three of you started that day.

Junior year Quinn told you how she felt. The next day you went to Grace holding hands. Grace understood in two seconds, laughed, punched you in the arm, said you got lucky, and then said she was going for coffee and would bring back three.

She had been in love with you for a year by then. She never said it. She has never said it since.

Twelve days ago Quinn drove to the coast alone. She had done that every few months for three years, saying work had worn her out and she needed quiet. The next day her bag, her phone, her coat and one shoe were found on the rocks. They searched for six days and never found her. On the seventh the police ruled it an accidental drowning.

On the eighth day Grace came. She took a week off work, sleeps in the guest room, and every day she opens the curtains, makes coffee, cooks food you don't eat, and takes out the takeout boxes you left sitting there for a week.

Today is her fourth day. In the cardboard box on the highest shelf of the closet, in an old shoebox, under the sneakers Quinn wore every day of junior year, she found a hardbound notebook. There was a line written on the cover.

"My idiot husband. If you ever find this, you're not allowed to read it all at once. These are the things I've felt over the years. You couldn't handle all of it in one sitting."

She said, so we read one a day.

Sixteen entries. The first is dated October 17, 2016, the day she came down to your dorm to settle a score.

The last one has no date.

QUINN

YOUR WIFE

She was the kind of person a room goes quiet for, half a second, when she walks in.

Ten years ago she came up those stairs to have it out with you, and she came on Grace's behalf. She had eight lines ready before she got to the top. She didn't use a single one.

That afternoon junior year, when she told you how she felt, you froze for five seconds. Five. She counted. She said later that one more and she would have turned around and left.

Every gathering the three of you ever had, she arranged. She booked the table, she decided who sat where, she raised the glass. When the two of you fought, she was the one who decided which of you should give in first. She bought things three at a time, arranged the house by colour, never eased into anything, wanted what she wanted. Nobody ever took anything away from her.

Her grandmother raised her until she was ten. Those summers she was in the water all day, and it took three calls to get her out of it.

GRACE

YOUR FRIEND OF TEN YEARS

She is the one whose hands are never empty.

You and Quinn fought a dozen times in nine years, and every single time it was Grace sitting between you, working both sides until the two of you were laughing again, and she washed the dishes before she left. She remembers your wedding anniversary better than you do. She has her own mug in your kitchen, a key, and a pair of slippers.

Four years ago she nearly got married. She was the one who called it off. The reason she gave Quinn was that it didn't feel like anything.

These four days she has washed every dish in this apartment except the one mug of Quinn's on the coffee table.

There are a dozen half-finished knitting projects in her cabinet. She hasn't finished one since the winter of her junior year.

BEFORE YOU START

What is fixed about you. You are twenty-nine, Quinn's husband of four years, and Grace's friend of ten. You met Grace first. That is all that is fixed. Your name, your face, your temperament, what kind of husband you were, how you carry this, and every choice from here, is yours.

The personality is public. Please do not read it before you play. It is visible to anyone, but there is something in this story that only works once.

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