Chapter 5: Paul at the Door
Richard went to answer it.
Maya followed him into the hallway without thinking.
Paul Garrett was forty-three.
He was taller than Richard by two inches, with the kind of easy posture that belongs to men who have rarely been told no.
He was wearing a jacket over a grey shirt and he was holding his car keys in one hand, still looped around one finger, the way people hold keys when they expect to leave quickly.
He saw Richard.
Then he saw Maya behind him.
Then he looked past them both toward the kitchen.
"Is she here?" he said.
"Come inside," Richard said.
Paul stepped over the threshold.
Richard closed the door behind him.
"I want to be clear about something," Paul said, still looking toward the kitchen.
"Whatever Nicole has told you—"
"She told us your name," Richard said.
"That's all."
Paul finally looked at him directly.
Some of the easy posture shifted.
"Richard.
I understand this is difficult—"
"Do you." Richard's voice was completely even.
"My wife is pregnant.
My sister-in-law is in my kitchen.
My daughter found out in the worst possible way.
Tell me which part of that you understand."
Paul's keys stopped moving on his finger.
Maya watched him recalibrate.
She had seen that kind of recalibration before — in college, in arguments with boys who were used to talking their way out.
The moment when the easy explanation doesn't quite fit and they need a second to find another one.
"I'm not here to cause more pain," Paul said.
"Then why are you here?"
"Because you called me."
"I called you," Richard said, "because I want to hear you say, in my house, in front of my daughter, what you've been doing for the last eight months."
Paul looked at Maya.
It was a brief look, almost dismissive, and that briefness was enough.
"She doesn't need to be here for this," Paul said.
"She stays," Richard said.
Paul turned back toward the kitchen.
"Nicole," he called.
"Can you come out here?"
Silence.
Then footsteps.
Nicole appeared in the hallway doorway.
Behind her, half a step, came Diane.
When Paul saw Diane, the easy posture left him completely.
"Diane." He said her name the way someone says a word they've been rehearsing.
"I was going to—"
"Don't," Diane said.
Her voice was the quietest thing in the room.
"Just don't say you were going to tell me."
"I know this isn't—"
"Do you want to keep the house?" Diane asked.
The question was so direct that even Richard went still.
Paul's mouth opened and then closed.
"Because I spoke to my solicitor this morning," Diane said.
"Before Richard called.
Before any of this." She reached into her handbag and drew out a folded set of papers.
She held them out toward Paul without taking a step closer to him.
"These are already filed."
Paul stared at the papers without taking them.
"You spoke to a solicitor this morning."
"I've known for six weeks," Diane said.
"I was waiting to see if you would tell me yourself."
The hallway went completely silent.
Nicole made a small sound.
It wasn't a word.
"Six weeks," Paul said.
"Six weeks," Diane said.
"You had six weeks to come to me.
You didn't." She set the papers on the side table beside her, neatly, like she was leaving a note for someone who wasn't home yet.
"So now it's handled."
Paul looked at Nicole.
Whatever he was looking for on her face, he didn't find it.
"You knew she knew?" he said.
Nicole pressed her lips together and said nothing.
Paul turned to look at the papers on the table.
He had the expression of a man watching a door lock from the wrong side.
His keys were still in his hand, still looped around one finger, but he wasn't moving them anymore.
"I'll need my things from the house," he said.
"Arrange it through the solicitor," Diane said.
"Don't come to the house."
She picked up her handbag.
She looked at Richard.
She looked at Maya.
She looked, last, at Nicole — and what Maya saw in that look was not hatred.
It was something much older and more exhausted than hatred.
"I'll call you," Diane said to Richard.
She walked past all of them to the front door and let herself out.
The door closed.
Paul was still standing in the hallway with his car keys.
"You should go," Richard said.
Paul looked at Nicole one more time.
She was looking at the floor.
He left.
Richard locked the door behind him.
Then he stood with his hand on the latch for a moment, his back to the room, before he turned around and looked at his wife.
"I want to know one thing," he said.
"When you pointed at Maya this afternoon.
When you told me it was her — did you know Diane already knew?"
Nicole's silence was its own answer.
Richard walked back to the kitchen.
After a moment, Maya heard him fill a glass of water at the sink.
May you like
She stood alone in the hallway, in the quiet left behind by two people leaving and no one arriving, and understood that the worst part of the afternoon was not yet over.
Upstairs, very softly, she could hear Ethan crying.
