Aunt Diane had other plans #DramaAlert #DramaSeries #family

I called my sister from the bedroom.

Lena answered before the first ring finished.

“Tell me you’re okay.”

“We’re home. The kids are with Marcus.”

She let out a breath. “Diane called me this afternoon. She said you were overwhelmed and had decided the children should stay with Marcus while you rested at my place.”

“I never said that.”

“I didn’t think so. I asked to speak with you, and she said you were driving.”

I sat on the bed. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did. Twice.”

I checked my phone. Her missed calls were there, buried beneath the alerts I had ignored while driving.

“She asked if I could confirm you had a room here,” Lena continued. “I said you always have a room. Then she asked for my address and told me she might need it for paperwork.”

“What paperwork?”

“She wouldn’t say.”

I looked at the drawer containing Diane’s envelope.

“Please write down exactly what she told you,” I said. “While it’s fresh.”

“Nia, what happened?”

“I’ll tell you. First I need to make sure there isn’t anyone else she called.”

After I hung up, Marcus came into the room. He stopped when he saw my face.

“Lena heard from her too?” he asked.

I nodded.

He sat beside me, leaving a careful space. “Aunt Pearl is taking Mom home with her. She says Mom has a spare key to this house.”

“She does.”

“I’m changing the locks tomorrow.”

I had spent the drive thinking about finally sleeping in our bed. Now I could hardly bear to close my eyes.

“How long did you know she was talking about our marriage?” I asked.

Marcus rubbed his hands together. “She asked if we were all right after I came to help her. I told her we were tired. I said you and I had been short with each other.”

“Did you tell her I wanted to leave?”

“No. I didn’t think she’d hear that in anything I said.”

“She did more than hear it. She built a whole plan around it.”

“I know.”

His voice broke. I wanted to comfort him, but I needed him to listen first.

“Last month, Ava came home and asked if I needed lessons to take care of June. Your mother told her I did.”

Marcus looked up. “You said Mom had been making comments. I thought she was criticizing how we kept the house.”

“She was talking to our daughter.”

“I should have asked what she said.”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry.”

I had waited weeks for him to hear me. The apology helped, though it could not give Ava back the afternoon she had spent worrying about me.

“I need you to talk to the kids,” I said. “They heard enough tonight to think we might break up.”

“I will. We can do it together.”

I was about to answer when his phone buzzed. Pearl’s name appeared.

He put her on speaker.

“Marcus, I got your mother settled,” Pearl said. “There’s something you should know. She brought me a copy of a statement last week and asked me to sign as a witness.”

Marcus closed his eyes. “Did you?”

“No. Nia’s name was on it, and Nia wasn’t there. Diane said she’d ask someone else.”

“Simone,” I said.

Pearl paused. “I wondered if that was who she meant.”

“Do you still have the copy?” I asked.

“I told Diane to take it back. I do have the text she sent asking me.”

“Please keep it.”

“I will. And Nia?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you then.”

I looked at Marcus. His mother had taken her story to Pearl before tonight. Pearl had refused to sign, but she had not imagined Diane would keep going.

“Thank you for telling us now,” I said.

After the call, I opened the envelope again. The photographs bothered me. They showed the old apartment above the garage in Lena’s neighborhood, the place Marcus and I had rented before Ava was born. Diane had written beneath one: “Possible temporary address.”

Lena lived a few streets from that apartment. Diane must have known I would stay with her if she managed to turn me away.

“She had a place in mind for me,” I said.

Marcus read the note. “She thought you would leave without the kids.”

“She hoped I’d be too shocked to argue.”

He stood and walked to the window. “I’ve been letting her into this house whenever she asked. She watched us struggle for a few weeks and decided she could choose how it ended.”

I heard footsteps in the hall. Ava stood outside our door, holding Eli’s hand.

“Are you getting divorced?” she asked.

There was no way to pretend she had not heard that word downstairs.

I got off the bed and knelt in front of them. Marcus joined me.

“No,” I said. “We’re staying together.”

“Grandma had a paper,” Eli whispered.

“She wrote down something that wasn’t true,” Marcus told him. “Mom and I are going to handle it.”

Ava searched our faces. “Will she come back?”

“Not tonight,” I said.

Marcus added, “And she won’t come into our home again unless Mom and I both say she can.”

Ava stepped between us and put one hand on each of our shoulders. Eli followed. For a moment all four of us stayed there on the bedroom floor.

Then June began to cry from her crib.