She looked out the window at the dark trees passing. "It doesn't feel good yet."
"It won't. Not until it's over."
She nodded and said nothing else.
They arrived back in Memphis just after 9:00 p.m. Diana's car was in the driveway; she had come home between shifts to sleep for a few hours. Brendan's car was there, too.
Marcus idled at the curb, engine running. "You want me to come in with you?" he asked.
Maya thought about it. "Not tonight. I need to talk to her alone first."
Marcus looked at her steadily. "Call me the second it goes sideways."
She went in through the front door and found Diana in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a cup of tea and her reading glasses on, going through a stack of paperwork. She looked tired in the good way—the way she looked after a long shift when things had gone well. The kitchen smelled like lemon dish soap and chamomile.
Diana looked up and smiled. "Baby, where have you been? I texted you."
"I know, I'm sorry. I was with Uncle Marcus."
Diana's smile softened slightly. She took off her reading glasses. "Everything okay?"
Maya sat down across from her mother. She placed the manila folder on the table between them and pressed her palms flat on top of it. And she looked at Diana very directly and said, "Mom, I need you to listen to me. Really listen. Not the way you've been listening—the real way. Because what I'm about to show you is going to be hard. And I need you to look at it before you say anything."
Diana looked at the folder, then at Maya. Her expression had gone careful. "Okay," she said quietly. "I'm listening."
Maya opened the folder. She walked her mother through everything:
The Columbus Dispatch article first. She watched Diana's face as she recognized the man in the photograph. Watched her lean in closer. Watched the first flicker of something uncertain cross her features.
Then the marriage certificate. Maya read it aloud: "Brandon James Calloway, Cheryl Ann Morrow, married nine years, no record of dissolution."
Then she played the recording on her phone. Cheryl's voice, calm and clear, describing the $63,000, the disappearance, the children asking where their father was.
Diana listened to the entire recording without speaking. When it ended, the kitchen was very quiet. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere outside, a car passed on the street.
Diana looked at the marriage certificate for a long time. Then she said, "This could be a different person. The name is almost different. Brendan, Brandon..."
"Mom."
"Contractors work all over the country. It's possible—"
"Mom." Maya's voice was steady. "Look at the photograph."
Diana looked at it again. Her jaw worked silently.
"That's the same man," Maya said. "You know it is. I know you can see it."
The silence stretched. And then Diana did something that Maya was not prepared for. She did not get angry. She did not cry. She simply closed the folder very gently and pushed it back across the table toward Maya. Her hands were shaking slightly, but her voice, when it came, was composed.
"I hear you, baby. I do. But..."
"But what?"
Diana looked up. Her eyes were bright. "Maybe there's an explanation. People have complicated pasts. We all do. Maybe there's context I don't know about, that Brendan hasn't felt safe enough to tell me yet."
Maya stared at her mother.
"I love him," Diana said, and her voice cracked just barely on the last word. "After three years of just surviving, I finally feel like I'm living again. You have to understand how much that means."
"I do understand," Maya said. "I do. But, Mom, he has two kids in Columbus who are asking where their father is. He took their mother's savings. He is going to do the same thing to you."
Diana's eyes filled. She shook her head—not in denial exactly, more like a person trying to dislodge something painful from inside their ear. "I need more time," she whispered. "I need to talk to him. I can't just—"
"The wedding is in three days."