Diana

Diana is Roy Freeman’s former wife, the mother of their son, Tony, and the person whose return becomes a rare prospect of renewal in Roy’s later life. The novel presents her largely through Roy’s recollections and conversations: first as the partner he alienated through drinking and cruelty, then as a distant but continuing presence in his family, and finally as the person who arrives with one small bag and plans to stay. Her reunion with Roy does not erase the harm between them, but it gives him a memory he hopes to keep as his other stories disappear.

Identity and Perspective

Diana is introduced through Roy’s account of his past. He tells a new acquaintance that he was married to her for almost twenty years and that, after their divorce in the late eighties, she moved to Seattle with their son. The account establishes her as central to Roy’s family life, but the reader does not receive an independent account of her experience. What is known of her marriage, separation, and eventual return is filtered through Roy’s admissions, regrets, and hopes.

That limitation matters. Roy is candid that the marriage broke down through his own failures, yet his candor does not make Diana’s perspective fully available. She is not merely a symbol of his lost domestic life: she calls him, asks for help, decides to travel, and sets terms for her stay. Still, the emotional meaning of these actions reaches the reader through Roy, whose memory and narration shape how their relationship is understood.

Marriage, Racism, and Separation

Roy remembers that he and Diana faced hostility as an interracial couple in the early 1970s. When they went into bars, they encountered hostile and outraged looks, as well as looks that treated their relationship as though they had entered it to make a point. Roy says they both had to deal with those reactions. He could sometimes console himself that he would not have to spend Christmas with his in-laws in Massachusetts, but that small defense sits uneasily beside the prejudice they faced in public.

In Roy’s account, the decisive damage to the marriage came from his drinking and the person he became when drunk. He says he was not only coarse but mean: he insulted Diana, blamed her, and deliberately said what he knew would hurt her most. Remembering that conduct still turns his stomach. His description refuses an easy excuse. The social hostility surrounding their marriage forms part of its history, but Roy identifies his own behavior, not the world’s judgment of the couple, as the cause of the loss he regrets.

After the divorce, Diana and Tony moved to Seattle. Roy accepts responsibility for the break-up and says the cost of his stupidity was a life lived alone for nearly thirty years. The separation therefore persists in his story not as a clean ending but as a long consequence: distance from Diana, estrangement from Tony, and only rare contact with the family who built a life elsewhere.

Family and Continued Contact

Tony’s criticism keeps the divorce present between father and son. He repeatedly tells Roy, “You blew it,” a judgment Roy believes is true. Roy nevertheless thinks people should sometimes forgive one another, revealing the tension between accepting blame and wishing that blame might eventually give way to renewed closeness. His hope is not proof that Tony has forgiven him; the account stresses that Tony never stopped criticizing him.

The family has continued to grow beyond Roy’s reach. Tony married, and his daughter Erin was a year and a half old when Roy described her. Roy had seen his granddaughter only once, immediately after her birth. He repeats amusing stories about her that he has heard from Diana, a small but telling sign that Diana remains a conduit between Roy and the family life he rarely witnesses firsthand.

Diana also stays in contact directly. One evening, two or three weeks after their previous conversation, she calls to remind Roy of a favor: he had promised to track down a certificate from a company where she had worked years earlier, because she needed it for her retirement application. Roy offers an excuse and promises to do it the next day. Their exchange is ordinary and practical, not a declaration of reconciliation, but its familiarity shows that the relationship has not vanished with the marriage.

Return and Reunion

When Diana says she is coming over, Roy asks her not to. After hanging up, he lies on the couch with his eyes clenched until they hurt and water. Her proposed visit brings his remorse back with physical force: he recalls the cruelty of his drinking years and the disgust he still feels toward the man he was. The moment makes clear that he cannot welcome her return without confronting the history that preceded it.

Later, Roy drives toward the airport to meet her. As evening darkens on the turnpike, he feels nervous as if he were going on a first date. He takes the gun from his pocket, engages its safety, and puts it in the glove box; he reflects that he has finished his career as a police officer without using a gun on anyone. In the same quiet interval, he thinks about his illness and the memories he expects to lose. If he could preserve one memory to the end, he would choose this hopeful drive, made in the knowledge that he is going to see Diana and that she might decide to stay.

At the airport, she carries only one small bag, the sort used for a short trip. Roy kisses her on the cheek. Her hair color, perfume, and coat have changed, but her smile is the same. When he asks whether that is all she brought, Diana explains that she has hired a van to bring her other things the following week and intends to stay for a while. She jokingly tells him to send away the young woman in his life; Roy answers that the woman has left him. The exchange is playful, but Diana’s explanation makes the visit more than a brief stop: she has arranged to bring her belongings and stay, at least for a time.

They walk to the parking lot holding hands and leave together. Diana tells Roy about Tony, Tony’s wife, and Erin as he drives. The scene does not establish that every old injury has been repaired or that her stay will be permanent. Its significance lies in the modest facts it does provide: she has come, she intends to remain for a while, and they are once again sharing the car and a family conversation.

Narrative Significance

Diana’s return changes the emotional weight of Roy’s closing recollection. For months, the crime story has occupied him; as he listens to Diana on the drive from the airport, its memories peel away like pages carried down the highway. The case recedes not because its facts have become unimportant, but because Roy’s attention turns toward a living relationship and a possible future with someone he once hurt.

The ending leaves that future open. Roy hopes Diana may stay, while her plan is explicitly to stay for a while and bring the rest of her things later. That distinction preserves the scene’s uncertainty rather than converting it into a guaranteed reconciliation. Even so, the hand-holding, the shared drive, and the news of their family give Roy something his failing memory may not preserve: a calm, hopeful moment in which the past is acknowledged but does not occupy the whole road ahead.