Chapter 4: What Diane Did After Graduation
I didn't sit down.
"Just say it," I told him.
Ryan pressed his hands flat against his knees.
"After high school," he said, "Diane and I lost touch for a few years.
I went through a bad stretch.
You know about that part.
What you don't know is that she contacted me again about two years before I ran into you at the coffee shop."
I didn't speak.
"She'd heard I'd gotten sober.
That I was doing better.
She reached out, said she wanted to reconnect.
I thought it was genuine." He stopped.
"It wasn't."
"What did she want?"
"She knew I felt guilty about what I'd done to you in school.
She brought it up almost immediately — said she felt bad about it too, that we should both make it right.
She suggested we find you.
Together."
Something cold moved through me.
"She suggested it."
"She said she'd already looked you up.
Knew where you worked.
Knew you were single." He met my eyes.
"She told me which coffee shop you went to on Saturday mornings."
The room felt smaller.
"That day we met," I said slowly.
"At the coffee shop."
"It wasn't an accident," Ryan said.
"I was there because she told me you'd be there.
I want you to know — the apology was real.
Everything I felt was real.
But the setup…" He exhaled.
"The setup was hers."
I sat down then.
Not because he'd asked me to.
Because my legs made the decision without consulting me.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why would she do that?"
"I didn't understand it at first either.
But after we started dating, after things got serious — she pulled back.
Stopped answering my messages.
And then about six months ago, I found out why."
He reached into the nightstand drawer.
He pulled out a printed email.
"Her brother," he said.
"He's a financial advisor.
When Diane found out I'd come into my inheritance — my grandfather's estate — she started pushing me toward her brother's firm.
She wanted me to sign over investment management.
I didn't think anything of it at first.
Then I started looking at the numbers."
I took the paper from him.
The email was from Diane to her brother.
The date was eight months ago.
*He's completely gone on her.
Once they're married, he'll sign anything she puts in front of him.
We just need to stay close.*
I read it again.
"She wasn't trying to help you make amends," I said.
"No."
"She was using you to get to the money."
"Yes."
I set the paper on the bed.
"And she used me to get to you."
Ryan said nothing.
He didn't need to.
I looked at the email one more time.
Then I looked at my husband — this man I had married six hours ago, sitting on the edge of our bed with his hands open and his face stripped of everything except the truth.
"Does she think it worked?" I asked.
"She sent me a congratulations message this morning," he said.
"With a dinner invitation for next week.
Her brother was CC'd."
I almost laughed.
I didn't.
"Don't cancel it," I said.
Ryan looked at me carefully.
May you like
"What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking," I said, "that Diane has spent seventeen years believing I don't fight back."
