That night, propped against the pink headboard of her mother’s childhood bed, Annamae took Nana’s old notebook off the bedside table. It was bound in flowered corduroy instead of leather, and its pages were lined instead of blank. Unlike Coco, it had not been hers from the beginning. Like the dollhouse, it bore marks made by an earlier owner, someone deeply familiar to her and unknowable all the same.
She opened it to the first blank page and wrote:
Mom went to Balt. for Nobomi’s wedding. D. at Dante’s. N. gave me this journal. Made rice pilaf, meat loaf (N.) & icebox cake (me). I’m actually having a nice time with N.
Underneath, she made a diagram showing someone blowing into a horn beneath a constellation in the shape of a question mark. She drew some dotted lines and added the labels: ME, STARS, UNKNOWN OBJECT, DISTANCE.