Chapter 4: The Call She Wasn't Expecting
I drove home in silence.
I didn't turn on the radio.
I didn't call anyone.
I just drove, both hands on the wheel, watching the road the way you do when your mind is somewhere else entirely and your body is handling the mechanics on its own.
Diane.
I kept turning the name over.
Diane, who had cried at my wedding.
Diane, who had held my hand in the parking lot of the courthouse the day I filed.
Diane, who had said, *He doesn't deserve you, Rosa.
You're doing the right thing.*
Diane, who had apparently brought my father a letter I never wrote.
I pulled into my driveway and sat in the car for a long time.
Then I picked up my phone and called her.
She answered on the second ring, warm and easy, the way she always did.
"Rosa!
I was just thinking about you.
How's your dad?"
"Not good," I said.
"I just left the hospital."
"Oh, sweetheart.
I'm so sorry.
Do you need anything?"
"I need you to tell me about a letter."
A pause.
Short, but there.
"What letter?"
"The one you brought to my father eighteen years ago.
The one written in my handwriting.
The one that said I wanted Luis to let me go."
The silence this time was longer.
"Rosa, I don't know what you're — "
"Don't."
She stopped.
"My father told me," I said.
"He told me you brought it to him.
That you said you found it in my things.
That you said I'd written it and lost my nerve."
"He's dying, Rosa.
People say strange things when — "
"He was completely clear.
He remembered exactly.
He said your name."
Another pause.
I heard her exhale slowly, the way someone does when they're deciding which version of a story to tell.
"I was trying to help you," she said finally.
My grip on the phone tightened.
"Help me."
"You were miserable, Rosa.
You'd been miserable for two years.
You just couldn't admit it.
Luis wasn't right for you — everyone could see it except you.
I thought if you had a clean break — "
"You forged a letter in my handwriting."
"I didn't forge anything.
I just — I wrote something I thought you would have written, eventually.
I was speeding things up."
"You wrote a letter pretending to be me.
You showed it to my father.
And then you called me to tell me you'd seen Luis with someone at a hotel."
Silence.
"Did you see him with someone?" I asked.
"Or did you arrange that too?"
She didn't answer.
The non-answer was its own answer.
"Diane." My voice came out very flat.
"Did you set Luis up?"
"It was a long time ago — "
"Did you set him up?"
"He wasn't good enough for you!" Her voice cracked, suddenly loud.
"He was never going to be what you needed.
You were twenty-six years old and you were already disappearing into that marriage and I couldn't just watch that happen — "
"So you destroyed it."
"I freed you."
"You took eighteen years from me.
From my father.
From Luis." I stopped.
Steadied myself.
"Did Luis know?
Did he know it was staged?"
"No.
He was just — he was confused.
He didn't understand what had happened.
He thought he'd done something wrong and couldn't figure out what."
I thought about Luis's voice, the way my father described it.
Crying.
Calling out of nowhere.
*The cheating wasn't what it looked like.
Someone set it up.*
He'd spent eighteen years trying to understand something that had been done to him.
"I have to go," I said.
"Rosa, please — just let me explain — "
"You just did."
I ended the call.
Set the phone face-down on the passenger seat.
Outside, the neighbor's sprinkler kicked on.
Perfectly ordinary.
Water arcing across a perfectly ordinary lawn.
I sat there until my hands stopped shaking.
Then I picked the phone back up.
May you like
Not to call Diane again.
To find a number I had deleted eighteen years ago.
