Chapter 6: The Phone Call
Her voice didn't change much.
That was what I noticed first.
A slight cooling, a slight tightening at the edges — but she didn't stumble.
She had been ready for this moment longer than I had.
"Well," she said.
"Hello."
"Hello, Margaret." I used her name deliberately.
I had spent seven years softening around her.
I was done with that.
"I suppose Daniel has been telling you things."
"He has," I said.
"And I've been reading things.
He wrote me a letter the night before our wedding.
Did you know about that?"
A pause.
"I don't know what letter you mean."
"He wrote down everything he should have told me.
About Diane.
About you.
About the calls you've been making for seven years." I kept my voice even.
"He was going to burn it.
He didn't."
"I'm sure whatever he wrote was very dramatic." Her tone was light.
Dismissive.
The same tone she had used at that dinner years ago when she looked me up and down.
"Daniel has always had a flair for—"
"Margaret." Daniel's voice was quiet and flat.
"Don't."
A beat.
"I want to understand something," I said.
"You've been calling your son most evenings for seven years.
You arranged for him to walk into a room with his ex-girlfriend without telling him.
You told him eight months ago that he should explore his feelings for her." I let that sit.
"What exactly did you think was going to happen?"
"I think," she said carefully, "that a mother has the right to want what's best for her son."
"And you decided I wasn't it."
"I decided," she said, "that Daniel had options.
That he was young when he met you, and that he made a decision very quickly, and that perhaps with time—"
"With time he'd leave me."
Silence.
"That's what you were waiting for," I said.
"You weren't trying to protect him.
You were waiting for the marriage to fail so you could say you were right."
"You don't know anything about what I—"
"I know you've been talking to Diane."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"Diane is a family friend," Margaret said.
"She's your son's ex-girlfriend and you've been keeping that relationship warm for seven years in case you needed it." I looked at Daniel.
His face was pale.
"Did you tell Diane that Daniel was unhappy?
Did you tell her the marriage was struggling?"
"I don't see how that's—"
"Did you tell her that?"
The silence stretched out.
"I may have suggested," Margaret said finally, "that things were not entirely settled between them."
Daniel stood up from the stair.
"Margaret." His voice had changed completely.
Whatever careful distance he had kept for years was gone.
"You told Diane our marriage was unsettled."
"I was only—"
"You told another woman that my marriage was failing.
While it wasn't.
While I was here, in this house, with my wife." His voice didn't rise.
It dropped.
"Do you understand what you did?"
"I was trying to keep your options—"
"I didn't want options." He was standing in the middle of the hallway now.
"I never wanted options.
I wanted you to accept my wife.
That's all I ever asked you for.
Seven years.
That's all."
"Daniel—"
"I'm going to say this once." He looked at me while he said it, not at the phone.
"This conversation is the last one we're having about Diane.
About my marriage.
About what you think I deserve.
If you call me again about any of this, I won't answer.
And I won't explain why."
"You're being very—"
"I love my wife.
I have loved her since a bakery seven years ago.
That has never changed." He picked up the phone and took it off speaker.
Held it to his ear.
"Goodnight, Mother."
He ended the call.
The hallway was very quiet.
He set the phone down on the bench beside me.
His hand was steady.
"I should have done that years ago," he said.
I looked at him for a long moment.
"Yes," I said.
"You should have."
He nodded.
He didn't try to close the distance between us.
He understood that we weren't done.
"What happens now?" he asked.
I looked down at the letter still folded in my hands.
"Now," I said, "I need to know about Diane.
Not what your mother told her.
Not what your mother arranged.
I need to know what Diane thinks is happening between the two of you — because someone has been telling her something, and I want to know how much of it she believed."
He went very still.
May you like
"You think she'd talk to you?" he asked.
"I think," I said, "that she deserves to know the truth as much as I did."
