Chapter 5: What Carol Already Knew
Carol picked up on the second ring, which meant she'd been awake.
It was past ten.
"Nora." Her voice had that particular careful quality.
The one I'd heard exactly twice before in eighteen years — once when Grant's father was in the hospital, and once when she'd known about a surprise party she wasn't supposed to know about.
A voice that was trying too hard to sound normal.
"You already know," I said.
A pause.
"Know what?"
"Carol."
Three seconds of silence.
"He made me promise," she said.
"Nora, I told him he had to tell you.
I told him that at least four times.
He kept saying he needed more time."
I sat down on the bottom stair in the hallway.
The guest room door was still closed at the end of the corridor.
"How long have you known?"
"Sixteen months." Her voice dropped.
"He called me the week after Diane first contacted him.
He was — he was in a bad way.
He didn't know what to do.
I told him to tell you immediately.
He said he would.
And then he just — didn't."
"And you didn't tell me."
"He's my brother, Nora."
"And I'm your sister-in-law of eighteen years."
The silence that followed was the kind that doesn't need filling.
Carol knew what it cost me to say that.
I knew what it cost her to hear it.
"Is she real?" I asked.
"Diane.
Is she actually his daughter?"
"Yes," Carol said quietly.
"He had a test done.
Eight months ago.
I was with him when he got the results." A breath.
"She looks like him, Nora.
Around the eyes."
I pressed my hand flat against the wall beside me.
"What else?" I said.
"What do you mean?"
"Carol.
You've had sixteen months to sit on this.
You know more than the basic story.
What else?"
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"He's been meeting her," Carol said.
"Not just sending money.
Lunches.
A few dinners.
He brought her to my house once, in the spring.
He said — he said he wanted her to know some family before he told you.
So she wouldn't feel like a secret when it all came out."
"He brought her to your house."
"Once.
Yes."
"Does she know about me?"
"She knows he's married.
She knows your name." Carol's voice was careful again.
"She asked about you.
She asked what you were like."
"What did he say?"
Carol didn't answer immediately.
"Carol.
What did he tell his daughter about me?"
"He said you were the best person he'd ever known," Carol said.
"And that he was terrified of losing you."
I sat with that for a moment.
The cruelty of it.
The tenderness of it.
Both things true at once, which was somehow worse than if he had simply been a man without feeling.
"I need something from you," I said.
"Anything."
"Diane's number.
Not through Grant.
Directly."
"Nora—"
"She didn't choose this situation any more than I did," I said.
"She's twenty-six years old and she's been waiting in a room Grant built for her while he figured out his courage.
That's not her fault." I stood up from the stair.
"I want to talk to her myself.
Before Grant has the chance to prepare her for whatever version of this he plans to present."
Carol was quiet for a moment.
Then I heard her moving, a drawer opening.
"I have it," she said.
"He left it in my address book last spring." She read it out slowly.
I wrote it on the back of a grocery receipt from the kitchen drawer.
The irony of that was not lost on me.
"Nora," Carol said.
"I'm sorry.
I should have told you."
"Yes," I said.
"You should have."
I didn't say it with anger.
I said it because it was true and she needed to hear it plainly, without softening.
Carol had always respected plain truth more than comfortable kindness.
It was one of the things I had always liked about her.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'm going to find out who Diane actually is," I said.
"And then I'm going to decide what to do about Grant."
I ended the call and stood in the hallway for a moment.
The house was quiet.
The guest room light was off.
At the end of the hall, on the kitchen counter, Grant's phone sat face-up.
I walked past it, went upstairs, and closed our bedroom door behind me.
I didn't sleep.
But I stayed very still, which is sometimes the same thing.
In the morning, I was going to call a number written on a grocery receipt.
May you like
And whatever Diane Calloway said when she answered was going to determine what happened to the next chapter of my life.
I just didn't know yet that she was going to say something that made everything Grant had told me look like the smallest part of the story.
