Chapter 4: Four Years of Friendship, One Impossible Question
Diane picked up on the second ring.
"Katherine.
I was just thinking about you.
How are you holding up after the funeral?"
Her voice was exactly the same as it always was.
Warm.
Unhurried.
The kind of voice that made you feel like whatever you were carrying was safe to set down for a minute.
I had always loved that about her.
"I need to see you," I said.
"Today."
A short pause.
"Of course.
Is everything okay?"
"No."
She didn't push.
That was also like her.
"Come to the house.
I'll put the kettle on."
Diane lived twenty minutes from downtown in a quiet neighborhood with old oak trees and wide front porches.
I had been to her house dozens of times.
I knew which step on her front porch creaked, and that she kept a spare key under the clay pot by the door, and that she took her tea with one sugar and no milk.
I sat in her living room now, the photograph from the envelope face-down on the cushion beside me, and watched her carry two mugs in from the kitchen.
She set one in front of me and settled into the armchair across from me.
She looked at my face and her expression shifted — not dramatically, just a small tightening around the eyes.
"Talk to me," she said.
"How did you know my mother?"
The mug stopped halfway to her lips.
"What do you mean?"
"My father wrote your name on the back of an envelope tonight.
An envelope that contained my sister's birth record." I watched her.
"The sister I didn't know I had until an hour ago."
Diane set the mug down on the side table.
Her hands were steady.
That steadiness told me something.
"Katherine—"
"Don't." My voice came out sharper than I intended.
"Please don't say my name like that right now.
Just tell me."
She looked at the window for a moment.
Then back at me.
"I knew your mother before you were born," she said.
"We were close, for a time.
I was there at the hospital the night you and your sister arrived."
"Were you there when they took her away?"
Diane's jaw tightened.
"I was in the waiting room.
I didn't know what was happening until it was already done."
"But you knew afterward."
"Yes."
"And you never told me." I picked up the photograph and held it out to her.
"Four years, Diane.
You've known me for four years.
You knew I had a twin sister somewhere in the world and you never said a single word."
She looked at the photograph for a long moment.
Something moved across her face that I couldn't fully read.
"Your mother asked me not to," she said.
"I gave her my word."
"My mother has been d*ad for six years."
"I know."
"Then what exactly were you still protecting?"
Diane stood up and walked to the bookshelf on the far wall.
She ran her finger along the spines of the books on the second shelf, slowly, like she was counting them.
Then she stopped and pulled out a slim hardcover.
Inside the front cover, tucked flat, was another photograph.
She brought it to me.
It was a school photograph.
A girl, maybe seven or eight years old, with dark hair and my exact eyes looking directly into the camera with an expression I recognized because I had seen it in mirrors my entire life.
Slightly guarded.
Slightly defiant.
Like she was daring the world to say something.
"Her name is Nora," Diane said quietly.
"She grew up about two hours from here.
I've kept track of her.
Quietly.
From a distance." She paused.
"She's twenty-eight.
She works as a teacher.
She never knew she was adopted."
The photograph trembled in my hands.
"Does she know about me?"
Diane sat back down.
She folded her hands in her lap and looked at me directly.
"Not yet," she said.
"But Katherine — there's something else.
Something I didn't find out until last year.
Something your mother never knew."
The oak tree outside the window moved in the wind.
May you like
A branch scraped the glass once, gently, like a knock.
"Tell me," I said.
