Chapter 4: Don't Bring Her Here
We drove over anyway.
Ethan texted back one word — *Coming* — and put his phone face-down on the center console.
He didn't say anything for most of the drive.
Neither did I.
Marlene's house was a neat colonial on a quiet street.
I had been inside it dozens of times.
I had sat at her kitchen table and eaten her pot roast and listened to her talk about her church friends and her garden.
I had always felt slightly on the outside of things there, but I had told myself that was just how some mothers were with daughters-in-law.
I understood now that it was something more specific than that.
Ethan knocked.
He had a key but he knocked.
Marlene opened the door almost immediately, which meant she had been watching for the car.
She was dressed, hair done, composed.
She looked at Ethan first and then at me, and her expression didn't change at all.
"I asked you not to bring her."
"She has every right to be here, Mom."
"This is my house."
"And those are her clothes."
Marlene stepped back from the door.
Not an invitation exactly.
More like a tactical retreat.
We went inside.
The house smelled the same as it always had.
Something faintly floral, something faintly like old wood.
I had always found it comforting before.
Now it felt like a stage set.
"I want to see the room," I said.
Marlene folded her hands in front of her.
"There's nothing to see."
"You said that about the coat too."
Something moved across her face.
Not guilt.
Closer to irritation.
"I was doing something kind," she said.
"Diane has had a very difficult few years and she needed—"
"She needed my clothes specifically?
The ones you asked me for by name?"
"I knew they would fit her."
"You knew they would fit her," I repeated.
"So you lied to me for six months about a charity that doesn't exist, and you took my belongings and gave them to your son's ex-girlfriend."
"I didn't lie."
"What would you call it?"
"I simplified." Her chin came up slightly.
"You had too many clothes.
You said so yourself.
You were happy to donate them."
"I was happy to donate them to women who needed interview clothes.
Not to Diane."
"Diane needed them."
"That is not the point and you know it."
Ethan put a hand on my arm.
Not to stop me.
Just to let me know he was still there.
"Mom," he said.
"Show us the room."
Marlene looked at him for a long moment.
Then she turned and walked down the hallway without another word.
The door at the end was closed.
She had a small key on her bracelet.
She used it.
The room was a spare bedroom, small, with a single window.
There was a clothing rack along one wall and a narrow dresser and a full-length mirror in the corner.
My clothes were everywhere.
The navy dress was hanging in a dry-cleaning bag.
The brown boots were on a shoe rack at the bottom, polished.
The cream cardigan was folded on the dresser with tissue paper between the folds, like something precious.
I walked to the rack and pushed the hangers apart one by one.
Blouse.
Blouse.
Blazer.
The gray skirt I had worn to Ethan's cousin's wedding.
The black dress I had bought for a work event three years ago.
The striped shirt I had looked for twice and assumed I had lost.
"How many times did Diane come here?" I asked.
Silence.
"Marlene.
How many times."
"A few."
"Did she try things on in this room?"
No answer.
I turned around.
Marlene was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, and for the first time she looked something other than composed.
She looked caught.
"Did Ethan know Diane was coming here?"
"No," Ethan said immediately.
"Absolutely not."
I believed him.
The look on his face when he had come home last night was not the look of a man managing a situation.
It was the look of a man who had walked into something he did not understand.
I looked back at Marlene.
"I want everything returned."
"Most of it has already been—"
"Whatever is in this room.
Today."
Marlene's arms tightened across her chest.
"You're being dramatic."
"I'm being accurate." I picked up the green coat from the hook by the door.
The one from the photograph.
"This is mine.
Ethan bought it for me.
And you gave it to a woman you've been secretly keeping in contact with for years and you let her wear it in your backyard and you smiled at the camera."
Marlene said nothing.
"Why?" I asked.
"That's the only thing I actually want to know.
Why."
The silence stretched.
May you like
And then Marlene said something I was not prepared for.
"Because she should have been the one he married."
