Chapter 4: What She Said Next
Diane lowered herself onto the arm of the sofa.
Not gracefully.
The way a person sits when their legs stop cooperating.
"How long have you been planning this?" she asked.
"Since the night Iris was born."
Rachel made a sound — half laugh, half disbelief.
"You were in the hospital.
You had just given birth."
"I had ten minutes of peace and then I got a text asking for three thousand dollars." I shifted Iris to my other arm.
"It gave me a lot of clarity."
"Elena." Diane's voice had changed registers again.
Softer now, but with something working underneath it — calculation, or something close to it.
"You have to understand.
Rachel's situation has been genuinely desperate.
Those children —"
"Don't," I said.
"— those children are your nieces and nephews —"
"I said don't." I set Iris carefully in the bouncer and turned to face my mother fully.
"Don't use the children.
You've used them every single time and I am telling you right now, it won't work anymore.
Not today.
Not ever again."
Rachel stood up.
"So that's it?
You're just cutting us off?
Your own family?"
"I'm not cutting anyone off.
I'm stopping the transfers.
Those are two different things."
"Without that money, I can't make rent."
"I know."
"My kids will —"
"Rachel." I kept my voice even.
"Your children are your responsibility.
They have been your responsibility since the day they were born.
I love them.
But I cannot keep funding a situation that never improves no matter how much money goes into it.
I've been sending money for ten years and nothing has changed.
That's not bad luck.
That's a pattern."
Rachel's face went red.
"You sound like a stranger.
You sound like someone who doesn't even care about this family."
"I sound like someone who just spent fourteen hours in labor without a single person asking if she was all right."
That landed.
Rachel looked away.
Diane was very still.
I walked to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water.
My hands were steady.
I was almost surprised by that.
"I want to show you something else," I said.
I opened my laptop on the kitchen table.
Turned it so they could both see the screen.
It was a spreadsheet — color-coded, organized by year, by category, by amount.
"This is what ninety-three thousand dollars could have been," I said.
"This column is Iris's college fund at current projected growth.
This one is the home Marcus and I have been trying to buy for three years.
This one is the emergency fund we've never managed to build because every time we get close, something comes up." I tapped the last column.
"And this one is the trip Marcus and I were supposed to take for our fifth anniversary.
We cancelled it because you called the week before and said Rachel's electricity was being cut off."
Diane stared at the screen.
"We didn't know about the trip."
"Of course you didn't.
I didn't tell you.
Because I didn't want you to feel guilty." I closed the laptop.
"I spent ten years protecting your feelings while you spent ten years spending my future."
Rachel sat back down.
Something had gone out of her — the indignation, the performance of it.
What was left looked closer to shame, though I wasn't ready to trust it yet.
"What do you want us to do?" she asked.
Quietly.
The first quiet thing she'd said since she walked in.
"I want you to leave.
I want to feed my daughter and sleep for two hours.
And then I want you both to think very carefully about what you're going to say to me the next time we speak, because that conversation is going to determine what happens with the letter."
Diane stood.
Her handbag was on the sofa and she picked it up with both hands, holding it in front of her like a shield.
"You would really send it," she said.
"To Marcus."
"He deserves to know the truth about his own marriage."
"It will change things between you."
"Things should have changed ten years ago." I walked to the front door and opened it.
The cold air came in off the street.
"Drive safe."
Neither of them moved for a long moment.
Then Rachel picked up her coat.
She walked past me without speaking.
Diane stopped in the doorway.
"I did love you," she said.
"I do.
Whatever you think."
"I know you do," I said.
"That's what made it so easy for you."
I closed the door.
Stood with my back against it.
Listened to their footsteps on the porch, the car doors, the engine turning over.
Then I went back to Iris and picked her up, and she grabbed my finger with her whole fist, and I stood there in the quiet kitchen for a long time before I trusted myself to move.
My phone lit up on the counter.
A text from an unknown number.
*Elena.
This is Aunt Carol.
I think we need to talk.
There are things about your mother's finances you don't know.
Things that go back further than ten years.
Please call me.*
I stared at the screen.
Aunt Carol — my mother's older sister — had not spoken to our family in eleven years.
May you like
I had been told, firmly and repeatedly, never to contact her.
I had never been told why.
