Chapter 4: What Forty Thousand Dollars Buys
Grant didn't speak for almost a full minute.
Tessa watched him the way you watch someone decide whether to jump.
I watched him the way you watch someone who has already jumped and doesn't know it yet.
"She's my daughter," he said finally.
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Diane Calloway," he said.
"She's twenty-six.
Her mother and I — it was before you and I met, Nora.
Before everything.
Her mother never told me.
I found out eighteen months ago when Diane contacted me through the firm."
I set my mug down on the counter.
Carefully.
"You have a daughter," I said.
"I was going to tell you."
"When?"
He didn't answer.
"Grant." My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"When were you going to tell me?"
"I needed time to — I didn't know how to—" He pressed both hands flat on the table.
"I panicked.
I know how that sounds."
"It sounds," Tessa said from across the table, her voice quiet and precise, "like you told me your wife was dying so I wouldn't ask questions.
So I'd stay available on Saturdays while you figured out what to do about a daughter you'd hidden from both of us."
He looked at her.
"Tessa, that's not—"
"Did you tell her you were dying?" I asked.
He blinked.
"What?"
"Diane.
Did you tell her something was wrong with you?
Some reason you couldn't introduce her to your family yet?
Some reason she had to wait?"
The pause before he answered was exactly one second too long.
"He did," Tessa said softly.
She was watching his face the same way I was.
"Didn't he.
He told her something too."
Grant pushed back from the table.
"I need you both to understand the position I was in.
I had a daughter I didn't know existed.
I had a marriage I wasn't ready to risk.
I had—"
"Sit down," I said.
"Nora—"
"I said sit down, Grant."
He sat.
"The forty thousand dollars," I said.
"Was that the first transfer?"
He looked at the table.
"Was that the first one?"
"No," he said.
"How many?"
"Four.
Over eighteen months." He finally looked up.
"She needed help.
She was in debt.
Her mother had been sick.
I couldn't just—"
"How much total?"
He said the number quietly.
One hundred and ten thousand dollars.
Tessa made a sound I won't describe.
I didn't make any sound at all.
One hundred and ten thousand dollars from accounts I had equal access to and had never once questioned because I trusted the man who carried the same golf bag for eighteen years.
"I want to see the transfers," I said.
"Nora—"
"I want to see every one of them.
Tonight.
I want account numbers, dates, and I want to know what name those accounts are in." I stood up.
"And then I want you to call Diane."
He stared at me.
"Call her."
"Right now.
On speaker.
Because if she is your daughter and this is the truth, then she deserves to hear from you that the waiting is over." I held his gaze.
"And if she isn't your daughter, I want to hear what she says when she doesn't expect me to be listening."
Grant's hand moved toward his phone.
Then stopped.
"I can't do that tonight," he said.
"It's late.
She'll be—"
"Then you'll sleep in the guest room tonight," I said, "and we'll do it in the morning."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he looked at Tessa.
"You should go home," he told her.
"She'll go home when she's ready," I said.
"She came to my door.
She stays until she's ready to leave."
Tessa didn't move.
Grant picked up his phone and walked down the hall.
The guest room door closed.
Not sl@mmed.
Closed.
Which was almost worse.
Tessa and I sat in the kitchen for another hour.
She told me everything.
The wine bar where they'd met.
The story about my illness that he'd built slowly, detail by detail, over the first three months.
The way he'd cried telling it, which was the part that had made her believe him most.
I listened to all of it.
When she finally stood to leave, she stopped at the kitchen door.
"Do you believe him?" she asked.
"About Diane being his daughter?"
"I don't know yet," I said.
"But I know someone who might."
She waited.
"His sister," I said.
"Carol.
If Grant knew about Diane eighteen months ago, he told Carol.
May you like
He tells Carol everything he can't tell me." I looked at the hallway.
"And Carol has never been able to lie to my face."
