“Mom,” I said.
“The divorce,” she said. “Your father’s lawyer contacted her first. I don’t know if your father asked him to or if Vanessa found out somehow. She knew before I did that certain things were being done a certain way.” A pause. “I didn’t make it into a fight because I just wanted out.”
“Did it affect you? What she knew early?”
“Not in the end,” she said. “But there were a couple of weeks where I was operating on information she’d had for a month.”
“That’s helpful,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Hannah,” she said. “Be careful with this. With what it does to you, I mean — not the legal part. The family part.”
“I know,” I said.
“Vanessa isn’t bad,” my mother said. “She’s frightened. She’s always been frightened.”
I didn’t say anything.
“That doesn’t make it okay,” my mother added. “But it helps to know what you’re actually dealing with.”
## Aunt June
Aunt June called me Thursday morning. She’d gotten my number from Deb.
She was sixty-six years old and had been in our family’s orbit my entire life — Dad’s older sister, the one who remembered things other people forgot, the one who made people feel seen in the specific way that some people are just better at than others. I had always liked her more than I’d let on.
“I saw the page numbers,” she said. “Tuesday night. I didn’t say anything and I’ve been thinking about that.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“It’s not, actually,” she said. “I saw them and I decided it wasn’t my business and I let you sit there by yourself while she–” She stopped. “I’m sorry, Hannah.”