Chapter 9: The Notebook
The entries went back to the year Thomas started high school.
Richard's handwriting — small, precise, the same handwriting I had seen on birthday cards and grocery lists and the margins of crossword puzzles for forty years.
Dates in the left column.
Amounts in the middle.
And in the right column, initials or short names.
*PC* appeared most often.
Patrice Calloway.
Amounts ranging from two hundred dollars to several thousand.
Regular, like a second household budget, because that was exactly what it was.
But scattered through the entries, beginning about six years ago, a different set of initials appeared.
*LW.*
The amounts next to *LW* were larger.
Not household expenses.
Round numbers.
Five thousand.
Ten thousand.
Fifteen thousand, twice.
And beside several of them, a single word in brackets: *[loan].*
"LW," I said.
"I don't know who it is," Susan said.
"I went through everything I could think of.
Dad's contacts, his old work files, the other folders in the unit.
I couldn't find a last name."
"How much total?" I asked.
"Next to LW?
About sixty-two thousand dollars over six years."
I set the notebook down on the table.
Sixty-two thousand dollars.
Going somewhere.
To someone.
For something Richard had never mentioned.
"It could be legitimate," Susan said carefully.
"A business loan.
A private arrangement."
"It could be," I said.
We both knew it probably wasn't.
I picked up my phone and called Diane.
"I need you to run a name search," I said.
"Initials LW.
Possibly connected to Richard's business dealings or personal finances.
We found a notebook with cash entries going back six years."
"Send me photos of every page," she said.
"I'll have my investigator start today."
I photographed each page and sent them.
Then I sat back down at the table and looked at the notebook.
Forty years.
I had shared a bed, a table, a life with this man for forty years.
I had raised his children and kept his house and trusted him with everything because he had made himself the only one who could be trusted with anything.
And he had used that trust like a filing cabinet.
Organized.
Labeled.
Locked away.
"Mom," Susan said quietly.
"Are you all right?"
"No," I said.
"But I will be."
She reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
We sat like that for a while.
---
Three days later, Diane called.
"LW," she said.
"Lawrence Whitmore."
I didn't recognize the name.
"Who is that?"
"Richard's brother," she said.
"Did you know he had a brother?"
I set down the dish I was washing.
"Richard told me his brother d*ed.
Before we met.
A car accident."
"Lawrence Whitmore is alive," Diane said.
"He lives in Phoenix.
He's seventy-one years old.
And based on what I can see in public records, he and Richard had a financial relationship that went back at least fifteen years."
The dish drainer blurred in front of me.
"He told me his brother was de@d," I said.
"I know," Diane said.
"I'm sorry."
"Does Lawrence know about me?"
A pause.
"I think you should be the one to ask him that," she said.
"I have a phone number."
I wrote it down.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I dialed.
It rang four times.
Then a man's voice, older, a little rough at the edges.
"Hello?"
"Is this Lawrence Whitmore?" I said.
"It is.
Who's calling?"
"My name is Carol Whitmore," I said.
"I was married to your brother Richard for forty years.
And I think it's time we talked."
May you like
The silence on the other end lasted a long time.
Then Lawrence said: "I wondered when you'd call."
