Chapter 8: Lena
Claire called Lena Foss the following Tuesday.
I sat at the kitchen table while she made the call, not because she needed me there, but because she asked me to stay.
The call lasted eleven minutes.
When Claire hung up, she set the phone down carefully.
"She wants to meet this week," Claire said.
"She's been waiting a long time."
"For what exactly?" I asked.
"She found a journal.
Her father's.
Not the notes she sent me — something older.
More detailed." Claire folded her hands.
"She said she needs someone who knew Diane to confirm what she's reading.
To tell her if it matches."
We met Lena at a coffee shop on Thursday.
She was younger than I expected — early thirties, dark hair, careful eyes.
She had the look of someone who had been sitting with something heavy for a long time and had learned to carry it without showing it.
Ronnie came with us.
She'd asked to come, and neither Claire nor I had any reason to say no.
Lena stood when we walked in.
She looked at Ronnie for a moment before she looked at anyone else.
"You look like her," Lena said.
"I've seen photos.
You have her chin."
"I've been told that," Ronnie said.
They shook hands.
Something passed between them — recognition, maybe.
Two people shaped by the same absence.
We sat.
Lena ordered nothing.
She put a journal on the table — small, dark green cover, the corners worn soft.
"I found this in a storage unit," she said.
"After he passed.
I almost didn't open it." She touched the cover.
"I wish I hadn't.
And I'm glad I did.
Both at the same time."
"What does it say?" Ronnie asked.
Lena opened it to a marked page and turned it to face us.
The handwriting was small and slanted.
The entry was dated — nine months before Ronnie was born.
Claire read it first.
Her face went very still.
She slid it to me.
The entry didn't use Diane's name.
It used initials.
*D.* But the details matched — the pregnancy, the refusal, the anger.
And then a line that sat on the page like something dropped from a height:
*She won't listen.
She thinks she can do this without me.
She'll learn.*
I looked up at Lena.
"There are more entries," Lena said.
"Over the next several months.
They get worse." She paused.
"He was methodical.
He wrote things down.
I don't think he thought anyone would ever read it."
"What do you want to do with it?" I asked.
"I've already spoken to a lawyer," Lena said.
"He's de@d, so there's no criminal case.
But Diane's story can still be told.
There are journalists who cover cold cases — situations where someone was harmed and the system didn't catch it in time." She looked at Ronnie.
"I don't want to do anything without your agreement.
She was your mother.
This is your story as much as mine."
Ronnie looked at the journal on the table.
"He wrote about her like she was a problem to be managed," Ronnie said.
"Yes."
"And no one stopped him."
"No."
Ronnie was quiet for a moment.
"If we go public — what happens to your family?
Your name is Foss."
Lena's expression didn't waver.
"I've thought about that.
I've thought about nothing else for six months." She straightened.
"He was my father.
But what he did was wrong.
And I'm not willing to protect his name at the cost of her truth."
Ronnie looked at Claire.
Claire gave a small nod.
*Your call.*
May you like
"Tell me what going public would look like," Ronnie said.
"Tell me exactly."
