Chapter 8: Diane
She picked up on the fourth ring.
"Hello?"
"Is this Diane Marsh?"
A pause.
"Who's calling?"
"My name is Ethan Hale.
I'm — I believe we share a father."
Longer pause.
"I know who you are," she said.
Her voice was careful.
Not hostile.
Careful.
"Then you know about our father."
"I know he died two years ago.
I read it in the news." A breath.
"I didn't go to the funeral.
I didn't think I had the right."
"You did," Ethan said.
"I wish you had."
Silence.
"Mr.
Hale—"
"Ethan."
Another pause.
"Ethan.
Why are you calling me now?"
He was standing in the locked room, the green address book open on the desk.
Morning light came through the single window.
"Because someone else is about to call you first," he said.
"My father's brother.
His name is Victor.
He knows about you, and he's in trouble — legal trouble — and he may try to use your existence as a way to complicate things."
"Use me how?"
"Make it look like my father hid assets.
Made secret arrangements.
Was dishonest." Ethan paused.
"None of that is true.
He set aside money for you because he wanted to do right by you.
He didn't tell you because he didn't want it to feel like a transaction.
But Victor could frame it as something else."
Diane was quiet for a long moment.
"I don't want money," she said.
"I never did."
"I know.
But I wanted you to hear the truth from me before you heard a version of it from him."
"Why does it matter to you what I hear?"
Ethan looked at the sticky note still on the desk.
*For Ethan.
When you're ready.*
"Because you're my sister," he said.
"And our father spent eight years wishing he could say that to you himself."
The silence this time was different.
When she spoke again, her voice had changed.
Not soft exactly.
But the carefulness had loosened.
"He really set money aside," she said.
"Yes.
It's in a private account.
It was always meant for you."
"I don't—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I spent a long time being angry.
And then I spent a long time just trying not to think about it."
"That's fair."
"Is it?" A short, dry sound — not quite a laugh.
"I'm a forty-one-year-old woman who cried in her car when she read a stranger's obituary."
"He wasn't a stranger."
"No," she said quietly.
"He wasn't."
Ethan sat down in the desk chair.
"You don't have to do anything," he said.
"You don't have to meet me.
You don't have to take the money.
You don't have to be part of any of this.
But if Victor calls you, I wanted you to already know the truth."
"What's going to happen to him?
Victor?"
"He committed fraud against the estate.
He's going to be charged.
The evidence is significant."
"And this — me — it won't make things harder for you?"
"No.
Our father documented everything carefully.
Victor was hoping to use you as a distraction.
It won't work now."
Another pause.
"Ethan," she said.
"Yes."
"Did he — did your father ever say anything about me?
To you?"
He hadn't.
Not once in Ethan's memory.
And for a moment he felt the weight of that — the years his father had carried this quietly, alone, the way he carried most things.
"He didn't tell me," Ethan said.
"But he told Clara.
She's been with our family for years.
He told her everything — about finding you, about the account, about why he didn't reach out again." He paused.
"He said he didn't want you to feel bought.
He wanted you to have a good life.
He just wanted to make sure, if you ever needed anything, it was there."
Diane didn't speak for a moment.
"That sounds like someone trying very hard," she said finally.
"Yes," Ethan said.
"It does."
When the call ended, he sat in the locked room for a few minutes.
Then he closed the green address book and carried it with him downstairs.
In the kitchen, Clara was making breakfast.
Noah was at the table with a crayon and a piece of paper, drawing something with great concentration.
Ethan set the address book on the counter.
"I spoke to her," he said.
Clara looked up.
"She's all right," he said.
"She's — she'll be all right."
Clara nodded once.
She turned back to the stove.
Noah looked up from his drawing.
"Who's all right?"
"Someone who needed some good news," Ethan said.
Noah accepted this and returned to his drawing.
Ethan sat down at the table.
After a moment, Noah slid the paper across to him without looking up.
It was a drawing of a house.
Four figures in front of it.
A large yellow sun.
One of the figures was taller than the others.
Ethan looked at it for a long moment.
"Is this us?" he said.
May you like
Noah shrugged, the way children do when they've drawn the truth and don't want to make a fuss about it.
"Maybe," he said.
