Chapter 6: Diane
She had been waiting for one of us to find her.
Not hoping.
Waiting.
There is a difference, she said, and I recognized the echo of what I had thought about my father the night I called him.
She had been precise about it.
She had known, she said, that the letter would surface eventually.
She had known because she was the one who had asked our mother to keep it.
We met two days later at a coffee shop halfway between her city and mine.
Miranda came with me.
Diane was sixty-one years old.
She had our father's eyes — the particular shade of grey-green, the slight downward pull at the outer corners.
I saw Miranda see it at the same moment I did.
Neither of us said anything.
She ordered tea and wrapped both hands around the cup.
"I want to say first," she said, "that I have no interest in your family's money.
I haven't for a long time.
What I want is for the record to be accurate.
That's all I've wanted for years."
"Tell us what happened," I said.
She did.
Her mother and our father had been together briefly when they were both young.
When Diane was born, he had denied paternity for three years.
By the time he acknowledged her, her mother had moved twice and remarried.
He had come to their door when Diane was twenty-two, introduced himself, and offered what he called support.
"He was charming," she said.
"I was young and I didn't have a father and I wanted one.
So I accepted what he offered and I told myself it was enough."
"What did he offer?" Miranda asked.
"Money.
Occasional contact.
The promise that he would tell his family about me when the time was right." She looked at her cup.
"The time was never right."
"And my grandmother?" I said.
Diane looked up.
"Your grandmother contacted me when I was thirty-five.
She had found out through a cousin who had known my mother.
She wrote me a letter.
We exchanged letters for almost four years before she d*ed."
"She left you money."
"She left me $25,000.
She told me in her last letter that she had arranged it separately so your father couldn't interfere." A pause.
"She knew him well."
"But he did interfere."
"He forged my waiver.
His solicitor — a man named Hartley — filed it on his behalf.
By the time I found out, the estate was closed." She set the cup down.
"I wrote the letter.
I gave your father one chance.
He responded by visiting my employer."
Miranda's head came up.
"What?"
"He came to the company where I worked.
He spoke to my manager.
I don't know exactly what he said, but within two weeks I was let go.
Budget cuts, they told me.
I had been there eleven years."
The coffee shop was warm.
Someone at the next table laughed at something.
I felt very far away from the sound.
"The note on the back of the letter," I said.
"He threatened the child.
Whose child?"
Diane's expression shifted.
Just slightly.
Something careful moving behind her eyes.
"Mine," she said.
"You have a child."
"A son.
He was eight years old when your father came to my workplace.
Your father made it clear, through my manager, that he was a man with connections and patience and that he hoped my son would have a stable upbringing." She said it evenly, without drama.
"I understood what he meant."
Miranda's hand found mine under the table.
"I stopped," Diane said.
"I let it go.
I protected my son.
And I told myself that was the right choice." She looked at both of us.
"But your grandmother's money was mine.
And the forgery was real.
And I kept copies of everything."
She reached into her bag and placed a folder on the table between us.
"I kept copies of everything," she said again.
Inside the folder was a letter from the solicitor's office.
A copy of the forged waiver.
A signed statement from a witness who had been present when the waiver was filed.
And a photograph.
The photograph showed our father and Gerald Hartley standing outside a building, shaking hands.
The date stamp in the corner was one week after my grandmother's estate closed.
I looked at it for a long time.
"What do you want to do with this?" I asked.
Diane picked up her tea.
May you like
"Whatever you decide," she said.
"I've been waiting a long time for someone in your family to sit across from me and ask that question."
