Chapter 6: The Witness
Her name was Nora.
She lived two doors down and had been my neighbor for four of the six years I had owned the house.
She was seventy-one, sharp, and had the particular quality of older women who have spent decades watching people carefully and saying very little about what they see.
We had never been close friends.
But she had a key to my house — for emergencies, for the post when I traveled — and she had used it enough times over the years to know exactly what the inside of my life looked like.
I called her from the hotel.
"I heard a great deal of noise from that house last week," she said, before I had finished explaining.
"Shouting.
Doors.
That woman — the mother — she put three bags of your kitchen things in the recycling bin on a Tuesday.
I photographed it because I thought you'd want to know."
I sat very still.
"You photographed it."
"I photograph a great many things.
I'm seventy-one and I have an iPhone and nothing stops me."
"Nora.
Would you be willing to speak to my attorney?"
"I've been waiting for you to ask," she said.
"I'll tell her about the kitchen bags.
I'll tell her about the morning your husband's brother arrived with a van and they moved a piece of furniture out of your sitting room while you were at work.
I'll tell her about the woman who arrived last Tuesday with a notepad."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"You saw her arrive."
"I saw her arrive and I saw the two of you leave separately and I saw you go back in.
I didn't know what it meant at the time.
Now I think I do."
I called Claire immediately after.
"My neighbor has photographs," I said.
"Of Diane disposing of my property.
Of Eric's brother removing furniture from the house while I was at work.
And she witnessed the woman with the notepad arriving."
A pause.
"How detailed are the photographs?"
"She has an iPhone and apparently a great deal of time."
"I want to speak to her today."
Claire and Nora spoke for forty minutes.
Afterward, Claire called me back.
"The furniture," she said.
"Do you know what was taken?"
"There was an armchair in the sitting room.
Nineteenth century.
It had belonged to my grandmother.
I hadn't noticed it was gone."
"Eric's brother took it in a van three days after you sent the sale email.
Nora has the date, the time, and a photograph of the van's registration."
The armchair had been in my family for sixty years.
My grandmother had sat in it every Sunday morning of my childhood.
I had moved it into that house myself, alone, the week I bought it.
"That's theft," I said.
"Yes," Claire said.
"It is."
"Add it."
"Already done.
There's something else." Claire's voice shifted slightly.
"Nora mentioned that Eric's brother wasn't alone when he came for the chair.
She said a woman was with him.
Not Madison.
Not Diane.
Someone she hadn't seen before."
I didn't say anything.
"She described her as younger.
Well-dressed.
She waited in the van while the chair was loaded.
Nora said she looked like she knew the house."
The line was quiet for a moment.
"I'll find out who she was," Claire said.
I set the phone down on the hotel bed and looked at the ceiling.
The chair.
A woman in a van.
Eric's brother.
May you like
I had thought I understood the full shape of what had happened to my marriage.
I was beginning to think I had only seen the surface of it.
