Chapter 6: Patricia Fights Back
She called that evening.
Daniel answered on the second ring.
I sat across from him at the kitchen table and watched his face.
"Mom." A pause.
"I can't talk right now, I—" Another pause, longer.
His eyes came to me.
"She's right here."
He put the call on speaker and set the phone on the table between us.
"—completely out of proportion," Patricia was saying.
"I have given thirty years to this family.
Thirty years of dinners and birthdays and holidays and driving children to practices and sitting in bleachers in the cold, and one misunderstanding—"
"Mom."
"—one afternoon where I made a judgment call that you have all decided to turn into some kind of criminal matter—"
"Mom.
Stop."
She stopped.
"I talked to Beth today," Daniel said.
"And Renee.
And Karen."
Silence.
"I know about Emma.
And Tyler.
And Jamie."
The silence stretched longer this time.
When Patricia spoke again, her voice had changed.
The warmth was gone.
What was underneath it was something harder and more careful.
"Those situations were completely different."
"Were they?"
"Beth's daughter was in a locked car for twenty minutes, not an hour and a half.
Beth exaggerates.
She always has."
"Tyler was seven years old at a park alone."
"Tyler wandered.
I've told Renee that a hundred times.
That boy never stays where you put him."
"And Jamie?
Karen's son?"
Another pause.
"Karen and I have discussed Jamie.
That matter is resolved."
"It's not resolved, Mom.
None of it is resolved.
You just made sure each family thought they were the only one."
"That is a terrible thing to say to me."
"Is it true?"
The question sat there.
Patricia did not answer it.
"I want to meet," she said finally.
"In person.
Just you and me.
Without her there."
Daniel looked at me.
I shook my head once.
"No," he said.
"Daniel.
She has a recording.
Do you understand what she could do with that?
She could post it.
She could send it to people.
She could destroy this family over one bad afternoon."
"Over five bad afternoons," I said.
A beat of silence.
Then Patricia's voice came back, and it was no longer the casserole voice or the hard careful voice.
It was something I hadn't heard before.
Precise and cold.
"You need to be very careful," she said.
"You have a daughter who needs her family.
You have a husband whose career depends on relationships in this community.
And you have a recording of a private family dinner that you made without anyone's consent.
I have a lawyer.
I know what illegally obtained recordings are worth in court."
Daniel's hand went flat on the table.
"Think very carefully," Patricia said, "about what you actually want to happen here.
Because I promise you, it will not go the way you're imagining."
The line went quiet, but she hadn't hung up.
She was waiting.
I leaned toward the phone.
"Patricia," I said.
"Marcus kept the voicemail.
Beth kept the date and time in her calendar because she was so shaken she wrote it down that night.
Renee has the name of the stranger who walked Tyler back to you.
And Karen." I paused.
"Karen took photos of Jamie when she picked him up from that church hall.
He'd been crying for two hours.
She kept them."
Nothing from the other end.
"We've been talking to each other all day," I said.
"All five families.
For the first time."
The line went dead.
Daniel looked at the phone for a long moment.
Then he looked at me.
May you like
"She'll call her lawyer," he said.
"Let her."
