Chapter 3: What My Mother Knew
I held the phone against my ear and watched Diana's face.
She was watching me back.
Very still.
The way a person goes still when they are calculating, not when they are calm.
"Mom," I said.
"What is it?"
"I saw her," my mother said.
"Three years ago.
Before you introduced her to me.
Before you even told me her name."
"Where?"
"At the county records office.
I was there filing paperwork for your father's estate.
She was at the counter ahead of me.
I didn't think anything of it at the time." A pause.
"William, she was filing a change of address.
The address she listed as her previous residence — it was this house.
Your house.
The one your father left you."
The floor felt different under my feet.
"That's not possible," I said.
"Diana grew up in Portland.
She told me—"
"I know what she told you.
I'm telling you what I saw."
Diana took one step toward me.
"William, whoever that is, don't let them—"
I turned away from her.
"Mom.
Stay on the line."
I walked to the kitchen table and set the key down on the wood.
Brass.
Old.
The engraving along the bow was a repeating pattern — something between a vine and a lock mechanism.
I had never seen it before.
But I had seen the house.
Every room.
Every corner.
Or I thought I had.
"There's a room in the basement," I said quietly.
"Behind the wall.
Did you know about it?"
Silence.
Then: "Your father never showed me the basement plans.
He said it was unfinished.
I never went down."
"Did he ever mention Diana?
Any woman named Diana?"
Another silence.
Longer this time.
"He mentioned a tenant," my mother said slowly.
"Years ago.
A young woman who rented the lower unit before you moved in.
He never told me her name.
He said she left without notice.
That she'd left some things behind and he didn't know how to reach her."
My eyes went to Diana.
She was standing in the kitchen doorway now.
Arms no longer crossed.
Hands at her sides.
Her expression had shifted into something I couldn't name — not anger, not fear.
Something older than both.
"Diana," I said.
"How long have you known this house?"
She didn't answer.
"Diana."
"You don't understand what you're looking at," she said.
"Then explain it to me."
She looked at the key on the table.
Something moved across her face — grief, maybe.
Or the memory of it.
"That room was mine," she said finally.
"Before it was yours.
Before any of this was yours."
Maya appeared in the hallway behind her.
She had her stuffed rabbit pressed against her chest, watching us both with wide, careful eyes.
I picked up the key.
"Then you're going to take me down there," I said.
"Right now.
And you're going to show me everything."
Diana looked at Maya.
Then back at me.
May you like
"Put Maya in her room first," she said quietly.
"What's down there — she doesn't need to see it."
