Chapter 4 - The Photo Inside
The private suite was too quiet. Not like the ballroom quiet where everyone was watching. This was the kind of quiet that made the air conditioner sound loud.
I sat in a chair that was bigger than me. Someone had wrapped a white towel around my shoulders and it smelled like clean laundry. My coat was hanging over the arm of the couch, dripping onto the plastic they’d put down. My hair was still wet and cold water kept running down the back of my neck.
Evelyn stood at the vanity with her back half turned to me. The lights around the mirror were bright and warm and they made the teal of her dress look almost blue. She hadn’t said anything since she locked the door. She just held the necklace in both hands and looked at it.
I could hear her breathing. Short, careful breaths like she was trying not to make noise.
On the vanity in front of her there was a tissue box, a glass of water no one had touched, and my boots where I’d left them because my socks were still wet. The marble floor in here was the same as out there, white with gray lines, but there was a rug over most of it.
She lifted the necklace higher, up into the light.
“This hinge,” she said, more to herself than to me. Her voice was low. “I thought I’d broken it.”
She held the locket between her thumb and finger. The gold was warm from her hands. The little blue stones around the edge caught the light. I watched her thumb find the tiny ridge on the side, the one I’d never been able to open because Mom always said it was stuck.
She pressed.
There was a small click. So small I almost didn’t hear it.
The front of the locket swung open.
Inside, there was a tiny photograph. It wasn’t flat like a printed picture. It was a little oval, tucked behind a scratched piece of plastic, and the color had faded so the edges were yellow.
It showed a younger woman in a white dress holding a newborn baby. The woman’s hair was blonde and her face was turned down toward the baby. The baby was wrapped in a white blanket and its eyes were closed.
Evelyn made a sound. Not a word. Just air coming out too fast.
Her hands started to tremble. Just a little at first, then enough that the chain swung. She had to put her other hand underneath to steady it. I could see her chest move up and down now, faster than before.
I stared at the picture. The baby’s blanket. The woman’s dress. The way the photo was cut into an oval.
I’d seen it before.
Mom had taped it to our fridge with a magnet shaped like an apple. The magnet was chipped on one corner. The photo was faded in the same way, yellow at the edges, and the baby was in the same white blanket. Mom never said who the woman was. When I asked once she just said “that’s family” and moved it higher so I couldn’t reach it.
“That’s our fridge picture,” I said. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet room.
Evelyn didn’t look at me right away. She kept looking at the locket, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wet in the mirror light.
She whispered, “Sarah.”
Just that name. Soft, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to say it.
She turned then. Slowly, holding the open locket out toward me so I could see it closer. Her fingers were shaking so much the chain clicked against her teardrop earring.
“Where did you see this?” she asked. Her voice broke on the last word.
“On our fridge,” I said. “Mom tapes it up. She keeps it with the apple magnet. She said her grandma gave her the necklace and the picture came with it, but the locket was stuck and she couldn’t open it.”
Evelyn knelt down. The teal dress pooled around her knees on the rug. Now we were at the same height, and I could see her face close up, the lines around her eyes, the tears that hadn’t fallen yet making her eyes shiny.
“This is me,” she whispered. She touched the tiny photo with the tip of her finger, not quite making contact. “This is me holding her. The day she was born. She was six pounds. She wouldn’t stop crying until I sang to her.”
She looked from the photo to my face, to the mole under my ear, to my wet hair.
“Oh,” she said, and her breath caught. “Oh, honey.”
She didn’t touch me yet. She just held the necklace between us, open, the photo facing us both, her hands trembling around it, breathing like she’d been holding it for a long time.
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I understood then what the picture meant. Why Mom had kept it even when we moved apartments. Why Evelyn had gone still out on the marble floor.
The woman in the white dress was her when she was younger. The baby was my mom. And the necklace had proved it.
