Chapter Twelve
The referee’s whistle screeches through the crowd’s chatter.
He calls a foul on Alcott’s opponent, and Duncan’s team takes possession of the ball.
The whistle blows again, and Jadyn, Duncan’s cocaptain, is a blur of elegant movement as he dribbles down the court, sneakers squeaking against the hardwood, the other players on his heels.
Jadyn is too fast, though, and without any obstacles, he approaches the basket, shoots, and scores.
Across the stuffy gymnasium, Diana and Phoebe throw their hands in the air and cheer.
Andrea and Evan join them in celebrating, stomping their feet against the bleachers.
Noah jumps up, as he does every time Duncan or his teammates get near the ball, and shouts his approval.
Having appointed himself Duncan’s number one fan, Noah refuses to miss any of his games, even going so far as to wear a shirt with Duncan’s number, eleven, written on the back in permanent marker.
Duncan loves the attention, though he plays it cool for his cousin.
Diana is nervous, her jitteriness and agitation so palpable she feels as if she’s guzzled multiple espressos. Her nerves are not for Duncan—he’ll play his best and that’s enough—but for another reason.
On the plus side, she’s not had another uninvited guest. Diana called the locksmith the morning after the intruder’s visit and paid extra to have him come immediately to replace every lock in the house.
She also had him install bars over the basement windows.
When she gave new keys to her parents, Andrea, and Evan, electing not to hide a spare in the backyard, she explained that she’d read an article advising widows to change their locks, a “best practice” for living alone, and they all nodded sympathetically.
Only Lakshmi accepted the new key with concern etched across her face.
“If you still won’t go to the police, how about getting an alarm system?” she asked. “I’ll look into it for you.”
Diana shook her head. “The new locks should be enough.”
“New locks are not enough, and you know it,” Lakshmi said, clearly frustrated.
“Stop being stubborn about this. Think about your kids. You need to do more. If an alarm system freaks you out, how about one of those doorbell cameras? I’ll order one for you and have Ramesh install it.
” Lakshmi put her hand on Diana’s shoulder.
“Say yes, if for no other reason than it will make me feel better. And I know you don’t want to stress me out. ”
Diana gave in then, and Lakshmi had the new doorbell installed by the next afternoon.
These extra precautions haven’t helped to alleviate Diana’s worries.
She’s taken to looking over her shoulder when she walks down Alcott’s Main Street, sleeping with Duncan’s baseball bat next to her in bed, triple-checking that the doors and windows are locked before bed each night, and googling every call she receives on her landline.
She checks the answering machine each evening, and the hang-ups have continued. So far, they’ve all come up as Unknown.
The letter is weighing on Duncan, too. He hasn’t mentioned it since their talk on the basketball court, but this morning, Diana found a photo of Duncan and Tom in the trash, ripped into pieces.
The photo of the two of them on a beautiful spring afternoon as they battled it out in a competitive game of H-O-R-S-E, their foreheads puckered in concentration, had been pinned to the bulletin board over his desk.
When she asked him about it, he stalked off with a heartbroken look on his face.
She saved the pieces in her jewelry box for the day when she has answers for her son.
Down below on the court, Duncan jumps into the air and sends the basketball into a perfect arc. The ball falls through the net, and the gym vibrates with chants of “Alcott! Alcott!”
Noah hops up from his seat, punching his fist into the air. “Yeah, Duncan!” Phoebe stands up, too, holding Bear Bear over her head and dancing.
“He’s playing well,” Andrea says, leaning behind Noah to speak to Diana. “Too bad The General and Dad missed that basket. Where are they, anyway?”
“Dad’s closing ran over. They’ll be here soon,” Diana says, watching Duncan high-five his teammates.
Diana still hasn’t told Andrea or her parents about Tom’s letter or the break-in.
At first, she thought she was holding off because her family would ask too many questions—questions she couldn’t yet answer—but the truth is, she’s still hiding herself from them.
She’s lost count of the number of times she’s forced a smile on her face when all she wants to do is weep, or said everything is great when really, she’s drowning.
“Pay attention, Noah,” Andrea says, as she ties his sneaker laces. “You don’t want to fall going up and down the bleachers.”
“Yup,” he says, keeping his eyes on the game. Andrea smiles and kisses him on the top of his head.
“Mom,” Noah hisses, pushing Andrea away and scowling. “There’s a game going on!”
“Okay, okay, no kisses from Mom during basketball, I get it,” Andrea says. She catches Diana’s eye and shakes her head. “I thought I had more time before he rejected me.”
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Diana says. “You’re a good while away from being embarrassing just for existing.”
“I hadn’t planned on dealing with parental alienation for another eight to ten years.”
Andrea is never without a plan. Diana knows of only two occasions on which she deviated from a plan she’d set into motion: when she chose psychiatry instead of the surgical career she always envisioned, explaining that she wanted to “understand what made people tick, not just cut them open,” and when she gave up on the idea of a second child after barely surviving Noah’s early years, which were marked by severe acid reflux, colic, and an inability to sleep through the night until he was three years old.
Diana admires Andrea’s clear vision of the way her life is to unfold, though she doesn’t completely understand it.
She wonders whether her sister is closed off to spontaneity or unknown possibilities, but she’s never shared those concerns.
Their relationship doesn’t work if they criticize one another’s choices. They learned that the hard way.
Tom taught them that. Or more specifically, Diana’s relationship with Tom was the catalyst for Diana’s understanding that her relationship with her sister included areas where they could not tread.
Within months of meeting, Tom and Diana were living together and talking about marriage.
Andrea, who dated Evan for four years before agreeing to move in with him, and then only after drafting an extensive pro-con list, thought Diana was moving too fast toward a life-altering commitment.
“What happened to moving abroad? Running your own library?”
Andrea posed these questions, her voice urgent and bewildered, while they helped their parents decorate their house for Christmas.
Andrea and Diana stood in the stuffy attic, handing boxes down to their father.
Their mother’s directions floated up from the living room, where she commanded each step of the preparations.
Hunting amid the boxes for the angel to place on top of the tree, Diana shrugged and bent down to push a box of ornaments to the edge of the stairs, the cardboard scraping against the plywood floor. “I don’t know. I’ll figure that out. Or I won’t. It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? Your plans don’t matter?”
“Everything okay up here?” Francis asked as he popped up through the attic opening.
“We’re good, Dad. Still looking for that angel, though,” Diana said. He nodded and left with the ornaments.
Andrea clutched Diana’s arm. “You’re moving too fast, Diana. You’re not thinking this relationship through.”
Diana slowly unpeeled her sister’s fingers. “Andrea, I’m happy with Tom. That’s what’s important. Dreams change.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“No,” Diana said softly. “I’m not.”
They never spoke of that conversation again.
Phoebe taps Diana’s elbow. “Can I have M she was the one who paid the bills and balanced their checkbook.
She would have noticed if something were off. She looked anyway, though.
“Don’t worry about the money. It doesn’t matter. Put it out of your mind. The letter, too. Can you do that? Can you try?”
Duncan’s words come to her: Sometimes, I can’t remember him on my own.
Like he’s only a story someone told me, not a real person.
Diana thinks of Phoebe, too: how her daughter doesn’t remember sledding with Tom, or how much he loved Family Dinner.
As the memories of Tom fade, their children are losing him all over again.
“If I were you,” Jonathan continues, “I’d let this all go and move on.”
If I were you.
How easy it is to tell someone else what to do with their life. Jonathan doesn’t have to live with the questions that trail along after the letter. The questions that will never get answered unless Diana makes uncovering the truth a priority.
She considers telling him about the intruder: the terror of having a stranger in her home, the worry about that missing photo no matter how many stories she concocts for why that person stole it, the constant fear they’ll return.
Jonathan might take her more seriously if she does, but he also won’t keep it to himself, like Lakshmi has promised to do.
He’ll call the police or her parents; he’ll force this latest development out into the open, and Diana will lose the little control she has over her life.
Her parents enter the gym through the side door, her father wearing a blue Alcott sweatshirt, her mother carrying a tote bag filled with what Diana anticipates will be healthy snacks for the kids and Gatorade for Duncan.
The General will not be happy about Andrea’s candy purchase.
Evan waves to them, and they climb up the bleachers, holding hands.
Diana wishes Jonathan responded differently; she wishes he validated her growing interest in finding answers, like Lakshmi had.
The jittery feeling from before expands into the hum of rage. Sweat breaks out on her temples, and her hands clench. Why didn’t Tom take this secret with him? Why is this mine to deal with?
“Diana, did I lose you?”
The humming fades, still in the background but quieter.
“I have to go. Phoebe’s calling me,” Diana says, looking at her daughter, M&M’s clutched in her hand, following Andrea and Noah back to their seats.
Diana says a fast goodbye and hangs up. She turns to the woman to ask why she was eavesdropping, but she’s already down the bleachers, scurrying toward the door.
I’d let this all go and move on, Jonathan said.
As if it would be that easy.
As if she could ignore that Tom lied to her.
As if she could forget the intruder in her house, violating her privacy, her children’s safety.
Her children . . . She sees how not wanting them to forget Tom and not fully knowing him are connected. The two ideas braid themselves together in a tight, thick rope of need she imagines winding around Duncan and Phoebe. That rope binds them to Tom, and she can’t let it break.
A plan begins to form. If Jonathan can’t find the information she needs, it’s time to visit Tom’s family in Vermont. Maybe they’ll be open to talking about Tom’s past. She can check out the archives of the Hamilton Star while she’s in town, too.
Maybe I can get some answers, she thinks, energized by the hope this new idea offers.
As the game continues below, Diana turns back to her phone and texts Tom’s cousin. Hey Chris, she begins.