Chapter 4
That night, after Noah was asleep, I lay in bed next to Ryan.
He was snoring softly.
I couldn’t close my eyes.
Every time I almost drifted off, I heard Diane’s voice.
“You need us, Emma.”
And those eyes.
Cold and calculating.
I got up.
I needed water.
The house was dark.
I walked down the hall.
The kitchen light was on.
Diane was sitting at the table.
A glass of red wine in front of her.
She was reading something.
Old photographs, by the look of it.
She looked up when I entered.
She didn’t look surprised.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” she asked.
I didn’t answer.
I went to the sink and filled a glass.
“Emma,” she said. “We need to talk. Woman to woman.”
I turned.
“About what?”
“About Ryan. About Noah. About this family.”
She gestured to the chair across from her.
“Please. Sit.”
I hesitated.
Then I sat.
She pushed the photographs toward me.
Ryan as a baby.
Ryan in high school.
Ryan and me at our wedding.
Then one I’d never seen.
Diane, much younger, sitting on a porch with a man who looked just like Ryan.
Her husband.
Robert.
“That was the day he left,” she said. “Christmas Eve. I’d made a ham. Bought Ryan the bike he’d begged for all year. And Robert just… walked out. Said he’d found someone else. Someone younger. Someone who didn’t remind him of all his failures.”
She took a sip of wine.
“I was thirty-five. No job. No savings. A twelve-year-old boy who thought his father was coming back. I did everything I could for that boy. Everything. I worked at a diner from five in the morning until two. Then I cleaned offices until ten at night. I sewed his clothes. I grew our vegetables in the backyard. I went without heat some winters so he could have new shoes for school.”
She looked at me.
“I gave him my life, Emma. Every single part of it. And now he’s mine. Not completely yours. Mine. And that money? It’s not just money. It’s proof. Proof that after everything Robert did to me, I won. I raised his son right. And his son will take care of me. As he should.”
I said nothing.
She leaned forward.
“You’re a good mother, Emma. I see that. You love Noah. But you’re also a nurse. You work long hours. You’re tired. You miss things. Things a grandmother sees.”
“Like what?”
“Like how Noah wets the bed sometimes.”
My heart stopped.
Noah had been having accidents again.
Only at night.
Only since Diane moved in.
I’d thought it was stress from school.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I do his laundry. I change the sheets when you’re at work. I’m the one who holds him when he’s ashamed and crying because he thinks he’s a baby again. I’m the one who tells him it’s our little secret so he doesn’t have to feel embarrassed in front of his busy mother.”
The glass in my hand felt slippery.
“You told him to keep it from me?”
“I told him there was no need to worry you. You have enough on your plate. And really, Emma… bedwetting at nine? It’s not normal. The school counselor thinks he might have anxiety. I’ve been looking into specialists. Of course, with the insurance we have now, we can’t afford the good ones. But with the inheritance…”
She trailed off.
Let the implication hang in the air.
I stood up.
“You’re manipulating him. You’re manipulating all of us.”
“Am I? Or am I the only one being honest about what this family needs? Ryan needs to feel like he’s providing. Noah needs stability and the best care money can buy. And you… you need to stop carrying the whole world on your shoulders. Let me help. Let us help. All you have to do is… get on board.”
“With what? Letting you run my house? Letting you decide what my son can and can’t have? Letting you make my husband choose between his mother and his wife?”
She smiled.
It didn’t reach her eyes.
“Ryan already chose, Emma. He called the shelter. He paid the fee. He was going to let that dog be taken away tomorrow. All I did was suggest it. He did the rest. Think about that when you’re lying in bed tonight wondering where you stand.”
I walked out of the kitchen.
My hands were shaking.
I went to Noah’s room.
The door was slightly open.
I peeked in.
He was curled on his side.
Buddy was on the floor next to the bed, his head resting on Noah’s hand.
The window was open a crack.
The October air was cold.
I went to close it.
That’s when I saw it.
On Noah’s nightstand.
A drawing.
It was our family.
Me on one side.
Ryan on the other.
Noah in the middle holding Buddy.
But Diane…
Diane was drawn as a big black shadow behind all of us.
Her arms were long.
They were reaching around.
Trying to pull Noah away.
I felt sick.
I picked up the drawing.
Folded it.
Put it in my pocket.
Then I sat on the edge of Noah’s bed.
I watched him sleep.
Diane was right about one thing.
Ryan had made his choice.
Not out of malice.
But out of fear.
Out of a lifetime of obligation.
Out of the belief that money could fix everything.
But she was wrong about me.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
May you like
And I wasn’t going to let her win.
Not without a fight.
