Never Noticed Novels & Stories

Her mother had always been good at the kind of silence that gave questions room. "I didn't know," she said finally. "I noticed. There's a difference. Knowing is afterward. Noticing is just — paying attention." "What did you notice?" "That I was paying attention in the first place. Usually I don't. Usually people go past and you register them the way you register traffic. When you notice that you're noticing" a small pause. "That's the thing." Nora sat with that for a moment. "It's just dinner," she said. "Of course it is," her mother said, exactly as Jade had, with precisely the same weight in exactly the same four words.

Marcus noticed. He noticed everything. That was the thing about him, the specific gift and the danger — he noticed the way some people breathed, automatically, continuously, without choosing to. He noticed my mother reaching for Dominic’s hand at the end of the table and Dominic receiving it without looking away from Marcus’s story. He noticed the way Dominic refilled my glass without being asked. He noticed the way I looked at the garden when the conversation at the table required me to look at something other than what I was looking at. He noticed.

So small that no one else might have noticed. But somehow... It felt significant.

I didn’t even notice the loud screech of tires or the bright headlights rushing toward me. And then— Bam.

More like the expression of someone who has just encountered the look of someone who had just found the missing piece of a puzzle she hadn't admitted she was solving, and who is deciding how to handle it before anyone else in the room notices they've noticed. I noticed. I'd been watching for it since we'd arrived. I'd known this moment was coming when Eleanor's attention would find Leo and lock on. I'd hoped it wouldn't happen until after the legal meeting, maybe not until after the funeral itself. Eleanor had never been slow about anything that interested her.

He didn't say a word, just turned and walked away. I didn't chase after him or say anything. At that moment, the last bit of resentment I had been holding onto seemed to vanish. I turned and looked into the distance. This life of mine? I realized there were still so many pursuits and challenges ahead. I didn't need to rely solely on family or love to keep moving forward. I looked ahead, and the road before me was still full of promise.

I muttered. And a notification popped up.