Chapter 3: What Diane Remembered
I sat in the car for another ten minutes before I called her back.
The phone rang twice.
"Clara." Her voice was steady, like she had been expecting this call for a long time.
"Thank you for calling."
"Who are you?" I said.
"My name is Diane Marsh.
I was married to Julian for fourteen months." A pause.
"We divorced three years ago."
The number on my phone was a 914 area code.
Westchester.
She had been close the entire time.
"How did you get my number?"
"A mutual friend from the hospital circuit.
She recognized Julian at your wedding announcement in the Times.
She called me." Another pause.
"I almost didn't reach out.
But then I thought about what my first morning was like."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"What happened to you?"
"Not over the phone," Diane said.
"Can you meet me?
There's a diner on Central Avenue in Hartsdale.
I can be there in twenty minutes."
I looked back at the house.
Julian had stopped pacing.
He was standing at the window now, watching my car.
"I'll be there in fifteen," I said.
---
Diane was already in a corner booth when I walked in.
She was in her early forties, dark-haired, composed in the way that people become composed after they've survived something and rebuilt from it.
She had a coffee in front of her and a manila folder on the table beside it.
She looked at my cheek first.
She didn't say anything about it.
She didn't have to.
"Sit down," she said quietly.
I sat.
"How long did you know him before the wedding?" she asked.
"Two years."
She nodded slowly, like that number confirmed something she already suspected.
"He's patient.
That's the thing people don't understand about Julian.
He doesn't show you who he is right away.
He shows you who he wants to be.
And he's very good at it."
"He cried at our vows," I said.
I don't know why I said it.
"He cried at ours too." She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup.
"He told me I was his reason for everything.
That I made him want to be better." She looked up.
"Sound familiar?"
It sounded word for word familiar.
"What's in the folder?" I asked.
She slid it across the table without opening it.
"Copies.
The originals are with my attorney." She watched me lift the cover.
"The top document is a restraining order I filed eighteen months into our separation.
The second is a police report from the morning I left."
I looked at the police report date.
Three years ago.
Almost to the week.
"He h*t you too," I said.
"The first time was over something I said to his mother at dinner." She said it flatly, without drama, the way people describe things they've processed so thoroughly they no longer need to perform the pain.
"Victoria told me I had set the table incorrectly.
I said I thought it looked fine.
Julian waited until we were alone in the kitchen." She picked up her coffee.
"Victoria heard it happen.
She came in afterward and told me I needed to learn when to hold my tongue."
The same words.
Nearly the same sentence.
"Does he know you're here?" I asked.
"No.
And Victoria doesn't know I still have all of this." She tapped the folder.
"When I filed the restraining order, Julian's attorney told me that if I pursued the case, they would make my life very difficult.
I was a junior associate at a firm in White Plains at the time.
I couldn't afford the fight." She looked at me directly.
"But you're not a junior associate, Clara.
And from what I understand, you're the one holding the financial keys to that apartment he's been living in."
I thought about my father's voice on the phone.
*Give me twenty minutes.*
"What do you want from this?" I asked her.
"Nothing," she said.
"I have a good life now.
I remarried.
I have a daughter." For the first time, something softened in her face.
"I just didn't want you to walk back in there thinking you were the problem.
Because that's what they'll tell you.
That you provoked it.
That you were difficult.
That if you had just been more patient, none of it would have happened."
I closed the folder.
"Can I keep this?"
"That copy is yours." She stood, left a ten-dollar bill on the table, and pulled on her coat.
Then she stopped.
"One more thing.
Victoria keeps a record.
Letters, notes, anything she can use.
She kept everything from my time with Julian.
If she thinks you're a threat, she'll use it." She picked up her bag.
"Don't give her anything new to work with."
She walked out before I could answer.
I sat alone in the booth with the folder in my hands and the police report on top, dated three years ago, with Julian's name written in the officer's handwriting in the box marked: *Subject of Complaint.*
My phone buzzed again.
Julian, this time: *"Clara, this is getting embarrassing.
Come home."*
May you like
I put the phone face-down on the table.
Then I called my father back.
