Chapter 8: The Conversation Diane Didn't Win
Nathan called Diane on a Thursday evening and asked her to come to our house on Saturday morning.
She arrived twenty minutes early.
I opened the door.
She looked past me immediately, searching for Nathan.
"He's in the kitchen," I said.
"Come in."
She stepped inside.
She was dressed carefully — more carefully than usual.
She had brought a tin of biscuits, which she held out to me with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"I thought we could have a civil conversation," she said.
"That's the plan," I said.
Nathan was at the kitchen table with a folder in front of him.
He stood when she came in but didn't move to hug her.
That small distance — the few feet he didn't cross — registered on her face.
She sat down.
I sat down.
Nathan sat down.
He opened the folder and slid the financial summary across to her.
She looked at it without touching it.
"I want to understand your thinking," Nathan said.
"Not to argue.
I want to understand how you justified this to yourself."
"I have always needed support—"
"You have a pension.
You have the house, which is paid off.
You have savings." He kept his voice even.
"This wasn't need.
So I want to understand what it was."
Diane's hands were in her lap.
"You're my son.
What's yours is mine."
"No," Nathan said.
"It isn't.
What's mine is mine and Rebecca's.
That's how marriage works."
"Rebecca." The name landed with a particular weight.
"You've been married three years.
I've been your mother for forty-six."
"That's not a competition."
"Isn't it?" She looked at me directly.
"She's turned you against me."
"You did that yourself," Nathan said.
"With the letters."
Diane's expression shifted.
"That was a long time ago."
"It was.
But it tells me that this—" he touched the financial summary— "isn't new.
You've been making decisions about my life without my knowledge for a very long time.
And every time I found out about one of them, I let it go.
I told myself it was love.
I told myself you meant well." He paused.
"I'm not telling myself that anymore."
"Nathan—"
"I've spoken to a solicitor." He said it quietly.
"The money can be handled two ways.
You can agree to a repayment plan, or we pursue formal recovery.
I'd prefer the first option.
But that's your choice."
The room went very still.
Diane looked at the folder.
Then at Nathan.
Then, briefly, at me.
"You would do this to your own mother."
"You did this to your own son," Nathan said.
"And to his wife.
And to a woman who loved me and spent years thinking I'd abandoned her."
Diane stood up.
"I will not be spoken to like this."
"Sit down, Mom."
She didn't sit.
But she didn't leave either.
She stood at the edge of the table, and for the first time since I had known her, she looked uncertain.
Not sorry — not yet.
But uncertain.
Like a woman who had always known exactly which direction the power ran and was only now discovering it had been rerouted.
"If you do this," she said, "things will never be the same between us."
"They're already not the same," Nathan said.
"That happened before today."
She picked up her handbag.
At the door, she stopped.
"I want you to know," she said, without turning around, "that I did love you.
Everything I did came from that."
"I know," Nathan said.
"That's what makes it so hard."
The door closed.
Nathan sat for a moment with his hands flat on the table.
Then he looked at me.
"Are you all right?" he said.
"I should be asking you that."
"I asked first."
I thought about it honestly.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"Ask me again in a few weeks."
May you like
He nodded.
That was the right answer and he knew it.
