Chapter 10 - The Last Conversation
Dad called me himself, three days after his statement. Ridgeline has a phone in the common room the residents can use, and he'd gotten a nurse to dial for him. I almost didn't know his voice when I picked up — slower, quieter, like the statement had cost him something he hadn't budgeted for.
"I wanted you to hear it from me," he said. "Before the lawyer told you."
"I already heard. Katherine called."
"Ah." A pause. "Then you know I told them everything."
"Yes."
"I should've done it forty years ago." He stopped. "I know that's not worth much now."
I stood at the counter with the phone against my ear and didn't say anything for a moment.
"Why now?" I asked. "After all this time. Why tell the truth now?"
He was quiet long enough that I thought the call had dropped.
"Because she had a daughter," he said finally. "Because Diane had a girl who kept a promise to a dying woman and came all the way across the world and pushed a mop around a school just to find you." His voice wobbled. "I'd told myself there was nobody left to answer to. And then there was."
"Marta," I said.
"Yes." I heard him breathe. "I'd like to meet her. If she'll let me. I'm not going to ask her to forgive me. I just want her to know I know what I did. That somebody in this family finally said it out loud."
I thought about what Diane had written. *Don't spend whatever years you've got left being angry for my sake.*
"I'll ask her," I said.
"That's all I'm asking."
There was a pause. Then he said, "Nora. The sweater."
"What about it?"
"Your mother knitted that sweater. Three months, every night after you two were asleep. She cried over losing it for years." His voice dropped almost to nothing. "I'm glad it came back. I'm glad it found its way home."
I didn't answer right away.
"So am I," I said finally.
We stayed on the line a little longer without saying much — the way you do when nothing left to say would be big enough, and quiet is the only honest thing you've got. Then he said goodnight, and I said goodnight, and we hung up.
May you like
Raymond Vale was charged seven weeks later. Fourteen counts of investment fraud, two of them carrying the papers from Diane's lockbox as supporting evidence. His firm was shut down. His accounts were frozen while the investigation ran. His lawyers put out a statement saying he'd fight all of it.
Katherine mailed me a copy of the charging document. I read the first page and put it in a drawer.
