Kate's Notes
I don’t keep notes to solve anything.
These are the things that don’t quite fit into reports or timelines. Observations made in passing. Patterns that repeat quietly. Thoughts that don’t belong in case files but don’t disappear either.
Some of this is personal. Some of it is just me noticing how people talk when they think no one’s listening. How places feel different once you know what happened there—or what almost did.
Nothing here is meant to be conclusive.
It’s just what I noticed.
On Things People Don’t Report
Not everything goes missing the same way.
Some things vanish loudly. Police reports. Search parties. Questions no one wants to answer. Other things disappear more politely. They’re misfiled. Overlooked. Reframed as misunderstandings so everyone can move on without too much discomfort.
I pay attention to what never gets reported at all.
The call someone almost made. The thing that felt off but didn’t feel important enough to say out loud. The moment that gets dismissed because nothing bad happened yet.
People are very good at explaining themselves out of responsibility. They say things like I didn’t want to cause trouble or it probably wasn’t anything or I’m sure it all worked out.
Those phrases have a way of aging poorly.
What doesn’t get written down doesn’t go away. It just waits until it shows up somewhere less convenient. In a place no one thought to look. Attached to someone who never realized they were carrying it.
I don’t expect people to report everything. That would be exhausting.
But I do notice when something important fails to qualify as worth mentioning.
That’s usually when it matters most.
On Being Remembered
People want to be remembered for the right reasons. It’s rarely up to them.
I notice it most in small towns, where history doesn’t live in archives—it lives in kitchens, hardware stores, and the pauses people leave in their sentences. Someone will say I don’t really remember when what they mean is I remember exactly enough to be careful.
Memory edits itself. It smooths edges. It removes anything inconvenient to the version everyone’s agreed to repeat.
Forgetting is efficient. Remembering takes upkeep.
Places don’t have that problem. They don’t revise. A building remembers how it was used long after the paint has been refreshed and the sign has changed. A road remembers who stopped taking it and why.
People insist places can’t remember anything. I’ve never found that convincing.
What lingers isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just the sense that a decision was made without you. That a story became official before all the facts finished arriving.
That’s usually when I hear phrases like it was a long time ago or it didn’t mean anything or no one was hurt in the end.
Those phrases travel well. They show up everywhere.
I don’t write everything down. Some things don’t belong in case files. Some details exist only so you can notice what’s missing later.
If something is remembered carefully enough, it doesn’t need repetition.
It just waits.
On Other People’s Certainty
I’ve noticed that the people who are most certain about what happened are rarely the ones who were there.
Certainty is usually borrowed. It gets passed around like a story everyone’s agreed not to question because questioning it would require effort. Or worse—memory.
Someone will say, That’s not how it went, with impressive confidence, even though five minutes earlier they couldn’t remember the year. Or the season. Or who else was present. But they’re absolutely sure about the part where nothing was wrong.
Nothing ever is.
People like clean endings. They like explanations that fit on a single breath. Accidents. Misunderstandings. One-time mistakes made by otherwise good people who definitely learned their lesson.
Those explanations tend to show up early and stick around long after they’ve stopped making sense.
I’ve learned to pay attention to how fast a story settles. If it lands too neatly, I get suspicious. Real events leave residue. They create discomfort. They don’t wrap themselves up just because someone says that’s all there is to it.
The phrase everyone knows is usually followed by something that only half the room actually believes.
I don’t argue with certainty anymore. I let it talk. It usually tells me what it’s trying to protect.
Besides, if something really was nothing, no one would work so hard to convince me.