Chapter 5: The Neighbor Who Saw Everything
Carol was sixty-three, a retired school administrator who had lived next door for eleven years.
She wore her coat over her pajamas and her reading glasses were still pushed up on her head.
She had come quickly.
She stepped inside and looked between Thomas and Diane with the expression of someone who had rehearsed what she wanted to say and was now hoping she'd get the chance to say it.
"I'm sorry to come so late," she said.
"Don't be," Thomas said.
"Come sit down."
"I don't think this is necessary," Diane said.
"Whatever Carol thinks she saw—"
"Diane." He said it once, flat.
"Go wait in the kitchen."
The silence that followed lasted four seconds.
Diane looked at Carol.
Carol looked back at her steadily, the way someone looks at a person they have been watching for a long time and have already made their decision about.
Diane walked to the kitchen.
Thomas led Carol to the living room.
They sat across from each other on the two chairs near the window.
"Tell me what you saw," he said.
Carol folded her hands in her lap.
"Three days ago — Tuesday, around two in the afternoon.
I was at my kitchen sink.
I saw Diane come out of the house carrying a large blue folder.
The kind with the elastic band around it.
She put it in the trunk of her car."
"Did she drive away?"
"She left for about forty minutes.
When she came back, she didn't have the folder."
Thomas was quiet.
"I didn't know if it meant anything," Carol said.
"I almost didn't text you.
But then tonight I saw all the lights come on and I thought — if I don't say it now, I might not get another chance."
"You did the right thing," he said.
"Was there anything else?
Anything over the past few months that you noticed?"
Carol looked at her hands.
"I didn't want to get involved.
I want you to understand that.
But yes." She looked up.
"I've seen Maya sitting on the back porch step in the cold.
More than once, in weather that was too cold for a child to be outside without a coat.
I knocked on the fence once and asked if she was all right.
She said she wasn't allowed back inside yet."
Thomas said nothing.
The muscle in his jaw moved.
"I brought her a blanket once," Carol said.
"Through the fence.
She thanked me very politely.
She said, 'Please don't tell Diane you talked to me.'"
He stood up.
He walked to the kitchen doorway.
Diane was standing at the counter, her wine glass in her hand, her face composed.
"Where did you take that folder?" he asked.
"I don't know what folder Carol is referring to."
"Blue folder.
Elastic band.
Tuesday afternoon.
Forty minutes.
Where did you take it?"
"I run errands, Thomas.
I don't document every—"
"That folder contained my first wife's will." His voice was level.
"A will that left her estate directly to our daughters.
Not to me.
Not to you.
To them."
Diane set her wine glass down.
"You don't know what was in that folder."
"I know exactly what was in it.
Because she told Maya." He reached into his jacket pocket and held up the envelope.
"In a letter she wrote before she d*ed.
A letter she hid for Maya to find."
Diane's eyes went to the envelope.
This time, the calculation was visible — fast, open, undisguised.
"That letter is the word of a woman who was not well at the end," Diane said.
"She was frightened and she was trying to create problems from beyond the grave because she couldn't accept—"
"Don't." Carol's voice came from the living room doorway.
She had stood up.
She was not loud, but she was very clear.
"Don't do that.
Don't speak about her that way in her own house."
Diane turned.
"This is my house."
"No," Thomas said.
"It isn't."
Diane looked at him.
The smile was completely gone now.
What was underneath it was harder and colder and far less careful.
"You have no idea," she said quietly, "what I am capable of when I am backed into a corner."
"I'm starting to understand," he said.
"Where is the folder, Diane?"
She picked up her wine glass again.
Took a slow sip.
May you like
"Get a lawyer," she said.
"Because I already have one."
