Chapter 3: What the Mother Knew
Her name was Diane.
In twenty years, she had never once called me by my first name.
It was always "Jordan's wife" or, after the kids came, "the children's mother." Never Nora.
Never just me.
I had told myself it didn't matter.
I walked toward her slowly, leaving Clark and Jordan behind me.
I could hear Jordan's voice rising at my back, something about lawyers and privacy, but I didn't turn around.
Diane watched me come.
She didn't move.
The lemonade glass was still in her hand, tilted slightly, like she had forgotten she was holding it.
"Diane," I said.
"Nora." Her voice was careful.
Measured.
"You knew about the account."
She looked past me toward the pool.
My youngest, Emma, was splashing near the steps, laughing at something her brother had said.
Diane watched her for a moment.
"I knew some of it," she said finally.
"How long?"
She set the lemonade down on the patio table beside her.
A small, deliberate motion.
"He came to me in February," she said.
"He told me he was in financial trouble.
That he needed help restructuring some things without you knowing.
He said it was to protect you."
February.
Our baby girl was six weeks old in February.
I had been home, barely sleeping, nursing through the night, and Jordan had been at his mother's table asking her to help him hide money from me.
"And you helped him," I said.
She didn't deny it.
"He's my son."
"I was your daughter-in-law for twenty years."
She pressed her lips together.
A thin line.
"I know that."
"Did you know about Percy?"
The pause was just long enough.
"Diane.
Did you know about Percy?"
"He mentioned he had feelings for someone," she said quietly.
"I told him to end it.
I told him that more than once."
"But you didn't tell me."
She looked at me then.
Directly.
And I saw something in her face I had never seen before in twenty years.
Not guilt exactly.
Something older than guilt.
Something that had been sitting with her for a long time.
"No," she said.
"I didn't tell you."
Behind me I heard Percy's voice, sharp and high, saying something to Clark.
I heard Jordan say my name like it was a curse word.
I didn't turn around.
"The transfers," I said.
"The agency he was funneling money through.
Do you know what that agency actually was?"
Diane's chin lifted slightly.
A reflex.
The same gesture Jordan made when he was about to lie.
"He told me it was a consulting arrangement."
"It was a shell company, Diane.
Clark found the registration documents.
Jordan set it up fourteen months ago, four months before he told me our marriage was over.
He was moving money out before he ever said a word to me."
Her hand found the back of the patio chair.
She gripped it.
"I didn't know that part," she said.
"But you knew enough to stay quiet."
She didn't answer.
From the pool, my son called out.
"Mom!
Mom, watch this!" He launched himself off the edge in a cannonball, and the water exploded upward, and his friends cheered, and none of them had any idea what was happening ten feet away on the patio.
I watched him surface, laughing, shaking water from his hair.
Then I looked back at Diane.
"I'm going to need everything he told you," I said.
"Dates.
What he asked you to do.
Whether you signed anything.
My lawyer will be in touch."
Her face went the same color as Jordan's had when he opened the box.
"Nora—"
"I spent twenty years in this family," I said.
"I cooked at your table every Christmas.
I sat with you when Frank was in the hospital.
I named my daughter after your mother." I stopped.
"And you helped him hide money from me while I was home with a newborn."
She opened her mouth.
I turned and walked back toward Clark before she could say a word.
Jordan was still there.
Percy had moved several feet away, her arms crossed tight, her eyes on the ground.
Clark stood between them and me, unhurried, like a man who had done this many times before.
Jordan's face had shifted.
The pale shock was gone.
What replaced it was something harder.
"You think this is over?" he said to me, low enough that only I could hear.
"I think it's just getting started," I said.
He leaned closer.
"You have no idea what I can do, Nora.
I have people.
I have resources you don't even know about.
You want to make this ugly?
I will make it ugly."
Clark's hand came to rest on Jordan's shoulder.
Not aggressive.
Just present.
"Sir," Clark said pleasantly, "there are about forty people at this party, and every one of them just watched you scream at a gift box.
I'd think carefully about what you do next."
Jordan looked at Clark's hand on his shoulder.
May you like
He stepped back.
But the look he gave me before he turned away was not the look of a man who was finished.
