Chapter 4: The Sister's Arrival
Diane arrived forty minutes later.
Maya heard the car in the driveway and went to the front window.
Her aunt was fifty-one, a year older than Nicole, with the same dark hair cut shorter and a way of moving through a room like she already knew where everything was going to land.
She was out of the car before the engine had fully stopped.
Richard met her at the door.
Maya couldn't hear what they said.
She watched them through the hallway glass — her father's posture, the way Diane's face changed when he spoke, the way she stopped moving entirely for three full seconds before she nodded once and stepped inside.
Nicole had not moved from the kitchen table.
Diane came through the hallway and stopped in the kitchen doorway.
She looked at her sister.
Nicole looked back at her.
Neither of them spoke.
Maya pressed herself against the wall between them and tried to make herself small enough not to matter.
Diane walked to the table and pulled out the chair across from Nicole — the same chair Richard had been sitting in.
She sat down.
She placed her handbag on the table in front of her.
She folded her hands on top of it.
"Tell me it isn't true," Diane said.
Nicole's jaw tightened.
"Diane—"
"Tell me it isn't true."
The silence stretched.
Nicole looked down at her folded hands and didn't answer.
Diane's breath came out slow and deliberate.
"How long?"
"Please don't do this here."
"How long, Nicole."
Nicole's voice, when it came, was very quiet.
"Eight months."
Diane stood up so quickly the chair hit the wall behind her.
She didn't raise her voice.
She didn't need to.
"Eight months.
While I was — eight months."
"I know."
"You know." Diane laughed.
It was not a kind sound.
"What exactly do you know?
Because from where I'm sitting, you've spent eight months lying to my face at every dinner, every phone call, every Sunday—"
"I know what I did."
"Do you?" Diane stepped back from the table.
Her hands were shaking.
She pressed them flat against her thighs.
"Where is he?
Is he coming here?
Does he even know you're—"
"He knows," Nicole said.
That stopped Diane completely.
"He knows," she repeated.
Nicole nodded.
Diane turned and looked at Maya for the first time since she'd walked in.
Her expression was not what Maya had expected.
It wasn't anger.
It was something more frightened than that.
"How much did you know about this?" Diane asked.
"None of it," Maya said.
"She tried to put it on me."
Diane looked back at her sister.
"You tried to put a pregnancy test on your daughter."
Nicole said nothing.
"Why?" Diane's voice cracked — just slightly, just once.
"Why would you do that to Maya?"
"Because—" Nicole stopped.
She pressed two fingers to her mouth.
When she lowered them, her voice had gone flat and careful again.
"Because Paul is asking me to leave.
And I didn't know how to tell Richard.
And I panicked."
The word panicked landed in the kitchen like something dropped from a great height.
Maya stared at her mother.
"You panicked," Maya said slowly, "so you let Dad think his daughter was pregnant."
Nicole did not answer.
"You were going to let him believe that.
Long enough for what?
Long enough to—" Maya stopped because she didn't know how to finish the sentence, and finishing it didn't matter, because the shape of it was already clear enough.
Richard appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Maya hadn't heard him come back in.
He was holding his phone.
His face had the look of someone who had already made one decision and was about to make another.
"Paul is on his way here," Richard said.
Diane's head turned sharply.
"What?"
"I called him." Richard set his phone on the counter.
"He picked up on the second ring.
He's coming."
Nicole was on her feet.
"Richard, you cannot—"
"I'm not asking you," Richard said.
He looked at Diane.
Something passed between them — a kind of silent, terrible apology from him and a kind of silent, terrible grief from her.
"I'm sorry," he said to Diane.
"Don't," she said quietly.
May you like
The front doorbell rang.
No one in the kitchen moved.
