He reads the first few pages.

Are you kidding me? Henry asks, and Jerry is thinking the same thing.

By the time he gets to the end of chapter one, his heart is pounding in his chest. He wants to scream. He wants to go back to where they left Eric and shake him from the collar and ask him why he would do this. He carries the manuscript through the house until he finds Hans in the garage, where he’s searching a set of shelves that are home to paint trays and brushes and sandpaper.

“Jesus, you look like somebody just walked all over your grave,” Hans says.

Jerry holds up the manuscript. “This opening chapter,” he says, struggling to keep his voice even, a struggle he loses, “is about a crime writer who has Alzheimer’s.” He waits for the appropriate reaction from Hans, which he doesn’t get, because he thinks Hans should be throwing things across the garage. He carries on. “This guy, this guy starts confessing to crimes that he thinks he’s committed.”

“So you inspired him.”

“I more than just inspired him!” Jerry says, and starts shaking his head, annoyed Hans is acting like it’s no big deal. Dropping Eric on his head doesn’t make him feel as bad as it did a few minutes ago. “He’s taken all the bad shit that’s happening to me and used it to try and get a book contract.”

“There anything in there about sneaking into people’s houses and framing the author?”

It’s a good point. Jerry’s anger subsides as he thinks about it, then his heart starts to race with the possibility. There could be some answers in here. “I’ll keep reading,” he says, then looks at the beginning of chapter two. He reads a couple of paragraphs while leaning against the doorframe. Hans watches him.

“Oh no,” Jerry says.

“What?”

“Give me a minute,” Jerry says.

“Jerry—”

“A minute.”

He reads the chapter. Hans moves to the next shelf along. A few minutes later Jerry turns the manuscript towards his friend. “Look,” he says. “Look!”

“What am I looking at?” Hans asks, coming over.

Jerry points to the chapter heading. It says “Day Who Knows.” He’s looking at a chapter entry set in a nursing home. The entry is in the form of a diary. The main character is keeping a Madness Journal. The main character’s name is Gerald Black, and Gerald has no idea how long he’s been in the home. However, Gerald’s words sound exactly like Jerry’s. In fact so much like Jerry’s own words that he knows they are his own. He has written them, but he doesn’t remember when. The sense of betrayal is so strong he feels like tossing Eric out the window all over again.

Hans takes the manuscript and reads. “This is you,” he says.

Jerry starts pacing the garage. “Eric has my journal.”

Hans looks up from the pages. “What?”

“Those are my words. I recognize them. Somehow he got hold of my journal, and he’s been using it to create that,” he says, nodding towards the manuscript.

Hans reads for a few more seconds, then looks back up at Jerry. “Are you sure?”

“It’s the ultimate Write what you know,” Jerry says. “It must be here somewhere.” He closes his eyes and puts his fist against his forehead. He taps it lightly a few times. “I must have had the journal all along at the home. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. But those are my words,” Jerry says, pointing at the manuscript. “Not all of them, not whatever is stringing the plot together, but some of them. Somehow Eric got hold of it.”

“How? If the police couldn’t find it, how did he?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that he has it.”

Hans hands him back the manuscript. “Okay, so the orderly took your journal and used it for his story, and if it’s here we need to find it.”

“And proof that he’s a killer,” Jerry says.

“That’s what we’re looking for. But we really need that journal. If he’s taking it back and forth from the nursing home,” Hans says, “it could be in his car. I’ll give it a thorough search.”

Hans opens the car and starts going through it. Jerry heads back down to the study. He sits behind Eric’s desk. He switches on the computer. While it’s booting up, he goes through the closet where there are some clothes hanging and some boxes on the ground. He starts pulling them out. He hears Hans walking down the hallway back towards him. He opens one of the boxes to find a bunch of bank and mortgage statements.

“Who the hell are you?”

It’s a woman’s voice, and it startles him, and he turns towards it. He’s never seen her before, but he knows it has to be Eric’s wife. Before he can answer, Hans steps in behind her and pushes a needle into the side of her neck. She doesn’t even have time to struggle. It only takes a couple of seconds, and then she’s asleep, Hans lowering her gently to the ground.

“Holy shit,” Jerry says, jumping to his feet.

“She’ll be fine,” Hans says. “But look what I found,” he adds, and he tosses a book towards him. Jerry catches it and opens it up. It’s a journal, but not his Madness Journal. Only in some ways it is. There are no eyes on the cover.

“It starts from your time in the nursing home,” Hans says. “Which means the original is still out there, and we still really need to find it.”

DAY WHO KNOWS

Some days I know who I am, I wake up and I know where I am and what’s going on, and the nurses here call that a good day. The irony is the good days are full of bad memories. I think I prefer the bad days. When everybody is a stranger, when I forget my family, then I forget what brought me in here. I can forget what I have done.

Today I know. Today is a good day. My name is Jerry Grey and this is my journal. The nursing home, this disease, they are my penance.

There’s an orderly here by the name of Eric. He suggested a journal might help with my condition. I have Alzheimer’s and it’s been advancing quickly. They tell me when I first got here six months ago I would know who I was six days a week and on the seventh my mind would take a rest and all would be lost. Since then the ratios have been changing. They tell me I spend half the week not knowing anything at all now. I spend periods of being Jerry Knows Everything, and equal periods of being Jerry Knows Nothing. Sometimes I’ll have an entire good day, sometimes an entire bad day. Because of the Alzheimer’s, I can never be sure what is real.

Except there is one thing I am very sure of. I killed my wife. Of all the things to forget, that’s the one thing I pray that I can.

The diary came about because I’ve been writing things down on scrap bits of paper, I’ve been writing about my days and finally Eric had the idea of giving me a proper diary I could write in. It’s going to remind me of the man I used to be, and most of all it will remind me of my loss. Aside from those two things, it’s also going to document how crazy I’ve been and how much more crazy there is to go. I’m going to call it my Crazy Diary. I’m going to write in it when I remember to, which . . .

Wait. Not Crazy Diary. Madness Diary. I’ve done this before. I was keeping a diary back before . . .

Before I murdered Sandra.

Where that diary is now, who took it, I have no idea.

Eric says keeping the diary will be useful, and that I should put everything in here that I can think of, which is why I’m doing this. He says I should think of it as therapy. He said it might help me get back to where I was, but if the memory of my Sandra lying dead and bloody on my office floor is true, then I don’t want to get my life back. Then he said something that encouraged me, something hopeful, and in a place like this hope and encouragement are the only things to stop one from curling up in a corner and waiting to die. He said the way technology advances, it’s impossible to know what the future holds. If that’s true, if there is a chance of getting better, then I need to do what I can to make that happen. Eva must hate me. She must. And it will be a painful journey getting back to the man I used to be, painful to relive the bad things I’ve done, but I must do this if there is any chance of saving my relationship with her. Eric also thinks I should jot down other ideas I have for books. He said it’s a way of exercising the brain, that I need to keep my mind active. Medical technology might bring the old Jerry back, but it won’t bring back Sandra. I will do anything if it will help me reach out to Eva, anything to tell her how sorry I am.