Chapter 8: What Our Mother Knew
Miranda called me that night.
"She knew more than she said," Miranda told me.
"I could see it.
The way she looked at her hands when I asked her."
"I know."
"Do you think she knew about the $75,000?"
"I think she knew about most of it."
A silence.
Then: "Why did she keep the letter?
Why did she put it in that envelope for me?"
I had been thinking about that since Saturday.
I didn't have a clean answer, but I had a shape of one.
"Because she couldn't stop him," I said.
"But she could make sure one of us eventually found out."
Miranda was quiet for a moment.
"That's not enough."
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
I drove to my parents' house on Tuesday, alone this time.
My father's car was gone.
I had timed it that way.
My mother answered the door.
She didn't look surprised.
She made tea without asking.
We sat at the kitchen table, the same table where Miranda and I had done homework as children, where my grandmother had sat on Sunday afternoons, where Lily had once colored pictures while the adults talked around her.
"How long did you know about Diane?" I asked.
My mother wrapped her hands around her cup.
"Since before you were born."
I had expected it.
It still landed.
"He told me before we married," she said.
"He said it was over.
That there was a child but that he had no relationship with her and never would.
I believed him.
Or I chose to." She looked at the table.
"When Diane came to the house that time — Miranda was fifteen — I realized he had been sending money for years without telling me.
I was angry.
We fought for weeks."
"But you stayed."
"I stayed." She looked up.
"And then I told myself it was manageable.
That it was in the past.
That what mattered was what we had built."
"And the inheritance?"
Her expression tightened.
"He told me the estate had been settled.
That your grandmother's wishes had been carried out.
I didn't ask questions I didn't want answered."
"Mum.
He forged Diane's signature.
He took $75,000 that belonged to me.
He took $22,000 from Miranda's settlement.
You signed Miranda's name to a document while she was in the hospital."
She flinched.
It was small but real.
"He told me it was a formality."
"You knew Miranda hadn't signed it."
She didn't answer.
"Did you know it wasn't a formality?"
Her cup went down.
"I told myself I didn't."
I looked at her.
The woman who had made tea every morning of my childhood.
Who had driven us to school and helped with costumes and sat in the front row of every school play.
Who had folded her hands and lifted her chin and said it was enough for today.
"You put the letter in that envelope," I said.
"You wanted Miranda to find it."
She nodded.
Very small.
"Why?"
"Because I was tired," she said.
"I have been tired for a very long time.
And I thought — if she found it, if you both found it — then it would be out of my hands.
It would be over.
And I wouldn't have to be the one to do it."
"You could have come to us yourself."
"I know."
"Years ago.
You could have come to us years ago."
"I know." Her voice was very quiet.
"I was a coward.
I know that.
I have known it for a long time."
The kitchen was warm.
The clock on the wall ticked.
Outside, a car passed slowly.
"Diane's son," I said.
"Dad threatened him.
Indirectly.
Through her employer.
Did you know about that?"
My mother closed her eyes.
That was her answer.
"I need you to make a decision," I said.
"Not for us.
For yourself.
Our solicitor may need a statement from you about the document you signed.
About what you knew and when.
You can refuse.
But if this goes further — and it may — your silence won't protect you.
It will only look like you were part of it."
She opened her eyes.
They were dry.
She had moved past the kind of grief that produces tears a long time ago.
"What would a statement involve?"
"Telling the truth," I said.
"About what you signed.
About what you knew.
About the letter."
She looked at the table for a long moment.
"All right," she said.
I drove home with the window down even though it was cold.
Lily was at school.
The house would be empty when I got back.
I thought about my grandmother writing letters to Diane for four years.
Two women who had been kept apart by the same man, finding each other anyway.
Exchanging letters.
Knowing each other.
I thought about what my grandmother had written in her will.
The separate account.
The separate solicitor.
The attempt to make sure Diane received what was hers.
He had stopped it anyway.
But he hadn't stopped the letters.
And he hadn't stopped my grandmother from telling Diane the truth about what she was trying to do.
Some things, I thought, he hadn't been able to reach.
My phone buzzed on the passenger seat.
A text from our solicitor.
*Records request came back.
The business account has a third signatory.
Not your father.
Not Hartley.
May you like
Someone else.
Call me when you can.*
