I called her not to make her part of the situation but because I realized I was tired of knowing that the story was out there and not knowing what people actually thought of me versus what they thought they knew.
Jenna was surprised to hear from me. We talked for a while — she has two kids now, she’s working in healthcare too, in administration on the hospital side, which is a coincidence we’d laughed about before — and eventually I said I wanted to tell her something.
She listened. She was quiet for a moment after I finished and then she said, “I always wondered.”
I asked what she meant.
She said she’d assumed the scholarship story was real but there’d always been something slightly off about it when she thought about it. She’d known I worked throughout school because I’d mentioned it at holidays. She’d known I’d taken a different route than Ethan. The story that these were voluntary choices had fit but not perfectly.
“What made you call me?” she asked.
I said I was trying to figure out how far the story had spread and who’d heard it.
She said she thought most of the family had heard some version of it. She said she’d be happy to hear a corrected version if I wanted to tell her one.
I told her what had actually happened. She listened with the attention of someone who understood that being told a thing and being told the real version of a thing were different, and who was trying to update her mental file on me accordingly.