Chapter 7: What Diane Said
Grace told me to wait three days before contacting Diane.
"Let him think you're processing," she said.
"Let him believe he has time to manage the situation.
People who believe they have time get careless."
Ethan texted twice the first day.
*I'm sorry.
Can we talk?* Then, six hours later: *I know you need space.
I'm here when you're ready.*
I didn't reply to either.
On the second day, he called.
I let it go to voicemail.
He said he loved me.
He said he'd made the worst mistake of his life.
He said Diane meant nothing.
I saved the voicemail and sent the recording to Grace.
On the third day, I drove to Millbrook.
I hadn't told Patrice.
I hadn't told Grace.
I'd thought about it the whole drive and decided that if I told either of them, one of them would talk me out of it, and there were things I needed to hear from Diane directly — things that couldn't be captured in a legal document or a secondhand account.
She lived in a ground-floor apartment in a quiet part of town.
I sat in my car across the street for ten minutes before I got out.
I rang the bell.
The woman who opened the door was smaller than I'd expected.
She was in a gray cardigan, her dark hair pulled back, and she was holding a child's sock in one hand like she'd been in the middle of folding laundry.
She looked at me and I watched the recognition move across her face — slow, then sudden, like a light being turned on in a dark room.
She knew who I was.
"You're Claire," she said.
"Yes."
She looked past me at the empty street.
Then she stepped back and opened the door wider.
I walked in.
The apartment was tidy and small.
There were children's drawings on the refrigerator.
A small pair of shoes by the front door — pink, with velcro straps.
A sippy cup on the kitchen counter.
I stood in the middle of the living room and looked at the drawings on the refrigerator.
"How old is she?" I asked.
Diane sat down on the arm of the sofa.
"Four.
She's at preschool."
"What's her name?"
A pause.
"Lily."
I turned around.
"Ethan told me she was his," I said.
"Didn't he."
Diane looked at her hands.
"Yes."
"Is she?"
The silence lasted long enough that I had my answer before she spoke.
"Yes," she said.
I sat down in the chair across from her because I needed to.
"Did you know about me?" I asked.
"From the beginning?"
She looked up.
"Not from the very beginning.
He told me after the third month.
He said the marriage was over.
That you were separated in everything but paperwork."
"We weren't."
"I know that now."
"When did you find out?"
"About eight months ago.
I found a photo on his phone.
You were in it.
You were laughing and he had his arm around you and it was — it was obviously not a separated couple." She stopped.
"I confronted him.
He said it was complicated.
That he was trying to protect you from the shock of the divorce."
"And you believed him."
She was quiet.
"Diane.
Did you believe him?"
"I wanted to," she said.
"I had a three-year-old.
I wanted to believe him."
I looked at the drawings on the refrigerator.
Crayon figures.
A yellow sun.
Two adults and a small child holding hands.
"He's been sending you money," I said.
It wasn't a question.
Grace had already found the transfers.
"For Lily's expenses.
Yes."
"From our joint account."
Diane's face changed.
"I didn't know that."
"The account we've had since we got married.
That both our salaries go into." I watched her face.
"He told you it was his personal account?"
"He told me it was a separate account he kept for — " She stopped.
"He told me it was separate."
"It wasn't."
She stood up.
She walked to the kitchen counter and stood there with her back to me for a moment.
"I'm not your enemy," I said.
"I came here because I needed to hear the truth from someone who wasn't going to calculate what to tell me."
She turned around.
Her eyes were wet.
"He said he was going to leave you," she said.
"He said it for fourteen months.
Every time I pushed, there was a reason to wait.
Your job stress.
A family event.
The holidays." She wiped her eye with the back of her hand.
"I stopped believing him about four months ago.
That's when I told him I was done waiting.
That's when he started pulling back."
Four months ago.
The same time the photographs started appearing in the trash.
He hadn't been destroying evidence of the affair.
He'd been trying to end it — and Diane hadn't let go cleanly, and the photographs were the proof of what he was trying to walk away from, disposed of one week at a time so I would never find them all at once.
It didn't make it better.
But it rearranged the shape of it.
"The necklace," I said.
Diane reached up and touched her collarbone.
Then she walked to the bedroom and came back a moment later.
She set the pearl necklace on the table between us.
"I didn't know what it was," she said.
"He said it was costume jewelry.
I never would have — "
"I know," I said.
I picked it up.
The clasp was the same small gold clasp my grandmother had fastened every morning for forty years.
"I have to go," I said.
I stood.
I walked to the door.
I had my hand on the handle when Diane spoke behind me.
"What are you going to do?"
I looked back at her.
"I'm going to talk to my lawyer," I said.
"And then I'm going to make sure my husband tells the truth for once — in writing, in front of people who can hold him to it."
I closed the door behind me.
In my car, I sat for a moment.
The necklace was in my hand.
I held it until the metal warmed.
Then I drove home and called Grace.
"I went to see her," I said.
May you like
Grace was quiet for exactly two seconds.
"Tell me everything she said."
