Whether the family would have told him, had no external investigation forced the question, is unknowable. Ethel May had seven years after June’s death and did not tell him. Lorraine, who was still living and did confirm the truth when contacted, had apparently not chosen to volunteer it. The arrangement had been maintained so completely and for so long that there may have been no internal mechanism that would have produced a voluntary disclosure.
That fact — the absence of any internal mechanism for disclosure — is its own kind of ethical observation. The arrangement was built to last indefinitely, not to be resolved. The people inside it had accommodated themselves to it so thoroughly that the prospect of resolution through disclosure does not appear to have been on any of their agendas. Jack was not going to find out from his family. He found out from Time magazine.
Extended Section: Who Lorraine Was and What Her Confirmation Meant
In many tellings of the Nicholson family secret, Lorraine is a background figure — she appears at the moment of confirmation and then exits. But her position within the family arrangement deserves its own attention, because she occupied an unusual position in the household’s architecture.
Lorraine was June’s sister, Ethel May and John’s other daughter, and — within the family’s public presentation — another of Jack’s supposed older sisters. If June was presented as his sister rather than his mother, Lorraine was in the category of sibling as well, though biologically she was his aunt.
What Lorraine knew about the arrangement, and when she knew it, is not precisely documented in the available sources. Some accounts suggest that only June and Ethel May were fully inside the secret at the highest level of knowledge. Others suggest that Lorraine knew but was part of the family’s collective management of the secret. Her ability to confirm the truth when Jack contacted her in 1974 suggests that she was not entirely outside the knowledge — she could not confirm what she did not know.