Chapter 8: The Phone Call She Made
The kitchen was cool and dim after the brightness of the garden.
Maya stood at the counter beside the telephone — an actual landline, cream-colored, the kind Evelyn had owned for thirty years and saw no reason to replace.
Maya picked up the receiver.
Set it down.
Picked it up again.
She dialed Scott.
It rang eight times.
No answer.
She dialed again.
This time it didn't even ring.
One long tone and silence.
She stood there with the receiver in her hand for a moment before setting it back in the cradle.
Through the kitchen window she could see part of the garden — Gerald closing his document case, Edward saying something to Evelyn, one of the aunts gathering plates.
All of them moving slowly, carefully, with the particular consideration of people who are trying not to look like they're watching the back door.
Maya opened the kitchen drawer closest to the telephone.
She didn't know what she was looking for.
She closed it.
Opened the next one.
Closed that too.
She sat down at the kitchen table.
She unfolded Cara's letter again and smoothed it against the wood.
She read it a second time.
Slower.
When she reached the line — *knowing you well meant knowing you'd lie to my face* — she stopped.
Her finger rested on the words.
She sat that way for three minutes.
The clock above the cooker ticked.
Outside, she could hear the low murmur of voices in the garden resuming, cautiously, the way conversation resumes after something difficult has passed through a room.
The kitchen door opened.
It was Evelyn.
She didn't say anything at first.
She went to the counter and filled the kettle and set it on without looking at Maya.
She took two cups from the cabinet.
She put tea bags in both.
"Sit down, Evelyn," Maya said.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I know you're not." Evelyn leaned against the counter and waited for the kettle.
The two women were quiet together for a moment.
Through the window the garden light shifted again — warmer now, moving toward late afternoon.
"I need to ask you something," Maya said.
Evelyn waited.
"Did Daniel ever — not the last few months.
Before that.
Did he ever say he was happy?"
Evelyn was quiet for a long time.
"He said he was trying to be," she said finally.
"I think he believed that was close enough."
The kettle clicked off.
Evelyn poured both cups.
She carried them to the table and set one in front of Maya and sat down across from her.
Maya looked at the tea.
"I'm not a good person," Maya said.
It came out plainly, without drama, without the performance of confession.
She said it the way you say a thing when you are tired of carrying it in a different shape.
Evelyn wrapped both hands around her cup.
"No," she agreed.
"Not always."
"And Daniel is."
"Yes."
Maya nodded slowly.
She didn't touch her tea.
"How much trouble am I in?"
"Significant trouble," Evelyn said.
"Gerald is thorough.
Daniel is patient.
And Cara—" She paused.
"Cara kept records of everything."
"She would," Maya said.
Not bitterly.
Accurately.
"You need to cooperate," Evelyn said.
"Not for my sake.
Not even for Daniel's.
For yours.
Fighting this will make it worse and you know it."
Maya turned the folded letter over in her hands.
"Scott isn't answering," she said.
"I know."
"How do you know?"
Evelyn looked at her.
"Because Daniel told Gerald last week that the moment proceedings were served, Mr.
Reeves would become entirely unreachable." She paused.
"He was right about most things."
Maya pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.
"I thought I was careful," she said.
"You were careful about the wrong things," Evelyn said.
"You were careful about appearances.
You forgot about people."
The sentence settled in the kitchen like something dropped from a height.
Maya looked up.
"Was I ever — did I ever make him genuinely happy?
Even at the beginning?"
Evelyn considered the question seriously.
She didn't offer false comfort and she didn't refuse to answer.
"Yes," she said.
"At the beginning, yes.
He was very happy." She set her cup down.
"That's what made the rest of it so difficult to watch."
Maya sat with that.
Outside, someone in the garden laughed — short and surprised, the laugh of a person who hadn't expected to find anything funny and was almost apologetic about it.
Life continuing.
The afternoon moving on without asking anyone's permission.
"I'll call Gerald back in," Maya said.
"And I'll listen."
Evelyn nodded.
"But I need—" Maya stopped.
Started again.
"I need five more minutes."
Evelyn stood.
She picked up her cup and moved toward the door.
She stopped with her hand on the frame.
"Maya," she said, without turning around.
"What."
"You still have time to do this right." She paused.
"Not everything.
But some of it." She glanced back over her shoulder, just briefly.
"Daniel didn't plan all of this to destroy you.
He planned it to get free.
There's a difference."
She went back out to the garden.
Maya sat alone in the kitchen with two cups of tea and the letter and the ticking clock and the kitchen window full of afternoon light.
May you like
She picked up her cup.
She drank.
