Chapter 5: The Paper on the Table
The note was handwritten.
Martha's handwriting — I recognized it from birthday cards she had sent Nick over the years, the ones she signed with her name and nothing else.
It was a list.
Seven items.
Numbered.
Written in the kind of careful, deliberate print that meant she had thought about each one before putting pen to paper.
The first three items I didn't fully understand.
They referenced names and dates I didn't recognize.
Account numbers.
A storage facility address.
The fourth item stopped me.
*Claire's mother — the agreement.
Confirm D.
has original.
If D.
talks, use it.*
I read it twice.
"Nick," I said.
He was already reading over my shoulder.
Diane was watching us.
"What agreement?" Nick asked her.
"Do you know what this means?"
"No," Diane said.
"I swear I don't.
I've never heard Martha mention Claire's mother before last night."
"She said 'the agreement,'" I said.
"Like it already existed.
Like it was something that had already happened."
My mother had passed away from a sudden illness six years ago.
She had been a quiet woman.
A careful woman.
She had worked as an office manager for a small property firm for most of her adult life.
She had never had money.
She had never had any connection to Martha or Nick's family that I knew of.
But she had known Martha.
I realized that now, sitting in that coffee shop, for the first time.
They had met.
At least once.
At a dinner, early in my relationship with Nick, before Martha's feelings toward me had hardened into something open.
I had introduced them.
They had shaken hands.
My mother had said afterward that Martha seemed like a complicated woman.
I had laughed at the time.
"Who is D.?" Nick asked.
Diane shook her head.
I looked at the list again.
The fifth item read: *Check with D.
before Monday.
Do not let N.
find the storage.*
"N.
is you," I said to Nick.
"Yes," he said.
"She doesn't want you to find the storage facility."
He took out his phone and photographed the note.
Then he looked at Diane.
"Can I keep this?"
"Please," she said.
"I don't want it."
We left the coffee shop twenty minutes later.
Nick held the door for me and I stepped out into the morning air and stood on the pavement and tried to think clearly.
"She planned this," I said.
"Not just the hair.
All of it.
She had a list."
"Yes."
"And somehow my mother is in it."
Nick didn't answer right away.
He was looking at his phone.
At the photograph of the note.
"The storage address," he said.
"It's in the same town where your mother lived."
I turned to look at him.
"That's forty minutes from here," I said.
"I know," Nick said.
"Do you want to go?"
I thought about the hotel room.
About the bridal suite we hadn't finished using.
About the honeymoon flight we had booked for Thursday.
"Yes," I said.
"Right now."
We were almost at the car when Nick's phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen and stopped walking.
"It's Martha," he said.
The message read: *I know you have the note.
Give it back and we can talk.
May you like
Don't do something you'll regret, Nicholas.
There are things about that girl's family you are not prepared to hear.*
