Chapter 4: What Nora Already Knew
Nora answered the door in her dressing gown, a mug of tea in one hand and reading glasses pushed up on her head.
She was sixty-one and had been my mother's closest friend for thirty years before they had a falling out over something I was never fully told, and she had been my closest friend for the six years since.
She took one look at my face and stepped back from the door.
"Come in," she said.
"I'll put the kettle on again."
I sat at her kitchen table.
The room smelled of toast and old books.
A tabby cat named Gerald appeared from somewhere and settled heavily on my feet.
Nora set a fresh mug in front of me and sat across the table.
"Tell me," she said.
I told her.
She didn't interrupt.
She didn't make the small sounds of sympathy that would have made me cry.
She just listened, both hands around her own mug, watching me with the steady attention of someone who understood that the most useful thing she could do right now was stay very still.
When I finished, the kitchen was quiet.
"Nora," I said.
"Did you know?"
She was quiet for one beat too long.
"Nora."
"I suspected," she said.
"I didn't know.
Not the way you mean."
"What did you suspect?"
She set her mug down.
"At Christmas.
When your parents came for the Hartley dinner.
Your mother said something — I can't quote it exactly — about how sometimes the wrong people end up together and everyone pays the price." She paused.
"I thought she was talking about the Hartleys.
Their son's divorce."
"But you're not sure she was."
"No," Nora said.
"I'm not sure."
I looked at my tea.
"Four months, Nora.
Graham was in my apartment every night for four months and he was planning a wedding with my sister."
"I know."
"My mother signed the paperwork."
"I know."
"My father witnessed it."
Nora reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
Her hand was warm and dry and steady.
"You didn't do anything wrong," she said.
"I know I didn't."
"I mean it.
Sometimes people say that and they're really asking to be contradicted.
I'm not contradicting it.
You didn't do a single thing wrong."
I pressed my lips together hard.
"Don't," she said gently.
"You can cry here.
Gerald won't tell anyone."
The laugh that came out of me was not entirely a laugh.
Gerald shifted on my feet and settled again, entirely untroubled.
"What do I do?" I said.
"Tonight?
Nothing.
Tonight you drink that tea and you sleep in the spare room and tomorrow you think clearly." She paused.
"But there is one thing I need to tell you before tomorrow."
Her tone changed.
Just slightly.
Just enough.
"What?" I said.
"The Ashcombe Glasshouse." She folded both hands on the table.
"Your mother didn't book it under your name.
I know the events manager there — Patricia Vane.
We were at school together.
She called me three weeks ago, as a courtesy, because she knew you and I were close." Nora looked at me steadily.
"The booking was transferred.
Officially.
With a signed release."
"A signed release," I said slowly.
"From you," Nora said.
"Or at least, from someone who signed your name."
The kitchen was very quiet.
Gerald purred on my feet, warm and completely indifferent to the fact that somewhere in the last four months, someone had written my name on a document I had never seen, releasing everything I had planned into my sister's hands.
"That's forgery," I said.
May you like
Nora didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
