Chapter 9
The kitchen was too bright the next morning. Sun came in hard through the little window over the sink and made the chipped tiles look whiter than they were. Mom was already dressed, her hair still pulled back from the night before but in regular clothes now, a gray sweater and jeans. She sat at the table with her phone face-up next to her coffee. She hadn't touched the coffee.
I had my backpack by the door and my cereal going soggy. The clock over the stove said 8:47. I kept looking at it because Mom kept looking at her phone.
"Has he texted back?" I asked.
She shook her head. Her thumb brushed the side of the mug but she didn't lift it. "He read it at 8:15," she said. Her voice was flat. "He hasn't answered."
The apartment smelled like coffee and the faint cleaner smell from wiping down the counters. The jewelry box was still on the counter where she'd left it last night, closed now. I could see the little dent in the velvet where the pearls used to sit, even though the lid was on.
At 9:02 her phone buzzed. She picked it up so fast coffee sloshed.
She read out loud. She didn't mean to, I think, she just did.
Mom stared at the screen and her mouth got tight. "'Vanessa was humiliated by what happened in the hallway,'" she read. "'She felt ambushed. She thinks you owe her an apology before anything else. Can we handle this like adults? I'll bring the necklace by later this week and we can talk.'"
She set the phone down. Her hand was shaking a little.
"He wants me to apologize," she said. Not to me, just to the room.
I pushed my bowl away. "For what? She was wearing your necklace."
"I know." Mom pressed her fingertips against her eyes for a second. When she looked up her breathing was loud. "He says Vanessa feels humiliated. That I made a scene."
"You didn't make a scene," I said. "You just left. He made you leave."
She picked the phone back up and typed. I saw her delete and retype twice. Then she hit send and read it to me after.
"'No. I will not apologize for being stolen from. The pearls were taken without permission. Bring them back by noon today as you said you would. Outside that, we have nothing to discuss.'"
I felt my stomach drop a little, even though she sounded calm. "Do you think he'll still bring them?"
Mom didn't answer right away. She looked at the jewelry box, then at my backpack. "I don't know," she said. "Your dad... he hates being caught in the middle, so he makes someone else the middle. Right now he's trying to make me the problem so he doesn't have to tell Vanessa she was wrong."
Her phone buzzed again almost right away.
"'Come on. Don't be like this. She didn't know they were that important. She thought they were just pearls I had. If you talk to her woman to woman, she'll give them back, no hard feelings.'"
Mom let out a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "She thought they were just pearls I had," she repeated. "Just pearls."
She typed again, shorter this time. "'Noon. Today. Or don't come at all.'"
She set the phone face-down and finally took a sip of coffee. It had to be cold.
The quiet in the kitchen felt heavy. The bus would be there at 9:30 and I didn't want to go to school with that feeling hanging there.
"What if he doesn't come?" I asked. "What if she just says no?"
Mom looked at me. "Then we figure out the next step. But I'm not apologizing for wanting my mother's things back."
I thought about what she'd told me last night, the note from my grandmother about wearing them when you need to remember you're loved. I thought about how Vanessa had stood on that stage smiling with them on. She'd looked like they belonged to her.
I remembered Great-Aunt Carol. She wasn't really an aunt, she was my grandmother's younger sister. She had been at the funeral and she had sent me a birthday card with a ten-dollar bill taped inside every year. She lived over in Maplewood, like twenty minutes away.
"What about Aunt Carol?" I said.
Mom blinked. "What about her?"
"She could be there when he brings them. So it's not just you and him and Vanessa. So she can see they were Grandma's. She knew they were Grandma's. Then Dad can't say you made it up or that you're being dramatic."
Mom stared at me for a second. Then she reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Her fingers were cold.
"That's a good idea," she said quietly. "That's a really good idea, Lily."
She turned her phone over and scrolled to contacts. I saw the name Carol Henderson with a little photo of a lady with short gray hair at a garden.
"Carol saw Mom give them to me," Mom said, more to herself than to me. "She was there that Christmas. She'll remember. She'll tell your dad exactly what they are."
She hit call and put it on speaker so I could hear. It rang three times.
"Hello?" A tired older voice answered.
"Hi, Carol, it's me," Mom said. She took a breath. "I need a favor. A witness kind of favor. Can you come over today around noon?"
While she explained, fast and in a low voice, I watched the clock tick to 9:18. Through the window I could hear kids down on the sidewalk heading to the bus stop. Carol said yes. She said she'd leave her house at eleven-thirty and be there.
Mom hung up and looked at her phone again. No new text from Dad.
"So what happens now?" I asked.
"Now I wait until noon," she said. She pulled my backpack closer to me. "And you go to school. And if your dad texts that he's actually coming, I'll tell Carol to come inside. If he doesn't, we don't chase them. We let the deadline mean something."
May you like
She stood up and hugged me. She smelled like coffee and laundry detergent.
Outside, the hallway buzzer hadn't rung. At 9:24, Vanessa still had the pearls, Dad was still waffling in texts, and Mom had stopped asking him to do the right thing and started asking someone else to watch him do it.
