Chapter 6: The Sister
Her name was Carol.
Joe told me everything on the drive to the police station — both of us in my car, the rusted container on the back seat, the two keys in my jacket pocket.
"Diane and Carol were close," he said.
"Two years apart.
Carol was the younger one.
When Diane d*ed, Carol blamed me."
"Why?"
"Because Diane had called her the night before.
Told her we'd been fighting.
That I didn't want the baby." He looked out the passenger window at the dark road.
"That wasn't true.
We'd had one argument — one — about money and timing and fear.
The way young people argue when they're terrified.
But that was the last thing Carol heard from her sister.
So that became the truth."
"Did you ever try to explain?"
"Once.
About a year after.
I found her address and I went to her apartment." He paused.
"She opened the door, looked at me, and said, 'If you say one word, I will make sure everyone you care about knows exactly what kind of man you are.' Then she closed the door."
"And you never contacted her again."
"No."
"Does she know about my mother?
About the agreement?"
"I don't know.
I never told her.
But Carol is—" He chose his word carefully.
"She's resourceful.
If she wanted to find out, she could have."
I thought about the name on his phone.
*DIANE.* The open back door.
The empty drawer.
"How old would she be now?" I said.
"Sixty, maybe sixty-one."
"Do you know where she lives?"
"Last I heard, she was in the same city.
But that was years ago."
I pulled into the police station parking lot and sat for a moment with the engine running.
"Joe," I said.
"If Carol has been watching you — watching us — for years.
If she knew about the agreement, about the box, about Mom—"
"Then she's been waiting," he said.
"For your mother to d*e."
The station was quiet at that hour.
A desk officer took our statement, looked at the container, photographed the document and the photograph, and told us a detective would contact us in the morning.
He said the text from the unknown number was worth flagging.
He did not seem alarmed.
I was.
We drove back to Mom's house in silence.
Joe went through every room while I stood in the kitchen.
Nothing else had been taken.
Nothing else was disturbed.
Whoever had been there had come for the notebook and nothing else.
"Why the notebook?" I said when he came back.
"Because your mother wrote things down," Joe said.
"She always did.
If she kept a record of the agreement — dates, details, what she knew about me — it would be in there."
"And if Carol has it now—"
"She has proof of everything." He sat down at the kitchen table.
"Or she thinks she does.
Depending on what your mother actually wrote."
I sat across from him.
The same table where Mom had served twenty-seven years of holiday dinners with a tight smile and a careful distance.
"She bluffed you," I said again.
"For twenty-seven years.
She kept you honest with a document that meant nothing."
"It meant something," Joe said quietly.
"It meant she was watching.
That was enough."
I looked at the empty drawer across the room.
"I want to go to the bank," I said.
"First thing tomorrow.
Whatever is in that deposit box — I need to know."
Joe nodded.
Then my phone rang.
Not a text this time.
A call.
The same unknown number.
May you like
I answered it.
A woman's voice said, "Don't go to the bank, Ellen."
