Chapter 30 #2
“I didn’t think you’d listen, ma’am. And after everything that happened here at the house and with your brother and now with little Vinnie… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s none of my business, but you were so kind. So different from the others. I was trying…I was trying to be—”
“You were trying to be a friend.”
“Yes, ma’am. You’ve always treated me like a person. I wanted to pay you a kindness in return.”
I laid a hand on his broad shoulder. “Thank you, but next time, just say so. There’s no need for spooky notes. I accused Carrie of sending them.”
His round face scrunched into a frown. “Oh goodness, I didn’t expect that. I apologize.”
“It’s fine, really.” After another companionable pause, I held up my glass. “Might I have another? I could use it.”
“Right away, ma’am, but I’ll sit this one out. I have some work to get back to.”
“Of course. And, Jerry?” He turned back to me. “Thanks for being a friend. I didn’t know how much I needed one.”
He nodded. “Anytime, ma’am.”
After he refilled my glass, he scuttled off in the direction of the kitchen while I sat in this grand parlor in this grand house alone.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the similarities in the deaths, the stream of misfortunes, and what on earth I was still doing there.
I was putting myself firmly into harm’s way, too.
And yet it was all so absurd. Life was filled with heartbreak and difficulties, and no one was immune.
No one walked through life unscathed, and everyone suffered a hardship of some kind, with or without a curse.
To be alive was to feel, and to feel was to suffer.
Eventually, I drifted off to sleep—until a door slammed shut, rattling the windowpanes. I bolted upright, looked around in confusion for an instant before I remembered where I was.
Ned stalked across the room. His usually neat hair looked tossed as if by the wind, his tie was askew, and the right edge of his shirt was untucked. He reeked of whiskey.
“Ned,” I said. I couldn’t force out the insufficient condolences, the meaningless “I’m sorries.
” They wouldn’t bring back his son, and they wouldn’t make him feel better.
Instead, I said, “If there is anything I can do to make you more comfortable, to take your mind off things, to help around the house—anything at all. I’m here. Evalyn is asleep.”
He poured himself a large glass of whiskey, set down his drink, and grasped my hands, holding them so tightly his knuckles whitened. “Thank you.” He released me and ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in clumps. “You can have a drink with me.”
We drank a whiskey and then two, while he told me stories about little Vinnie. At one point, he paused, and I knew he was crying. Emboldened by the whiskey, I laid my hand atop his for a brief instant. When he met my eye, I withdrew it quickly.
“I’ll just look in on Evalyn,” I said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
I stood on wobbly legs and realized then how much I’d had to drink and how little I’d eaten that day.
Clutching the railing, I took the stairs to Evalyn’s bedroom, where she lay sprawled on the bed in an awkward pose.
Her limbs were thrown across the covers.
I pulled a blanket over her as I had my father for many months and tucked it in around her.
I stared down at her, wishing her pain away.
I knew something of that pain, of loss, even if it wasn’t my child.
That was a special kind of hell I hoped never to experience.
Her face was streaked with black trails of makeup, and the skin beneath her eyes looked bruised.
In this position, she was as ordinary as I was, as ordinary as anyone.
My eyes fell to her neck. She wasn’t wearing the Hope?
This was the only time I’d seen her without it, other than the night she’d put it on her dog.
I wondered what she’d done with it. Perhaps the clasp had broken or come undone?
I felt around her covers gently, groping for the rough edges of the necklace.
I peered under the bed, looked through her vanity and the array of haphazard hair combs and tubes of makeup.
I glanced around the room and spied it on the floor in the corner of the room, as if she’d clawed the thing from her neck and thrown it, and perhaps she had.
Perhaps she’d desperately wanted to rid herself of the charm that wasn’t so lucky after all.
I stared at it, couldn’t look away. Should I… Could I…
Hands shaking, I carefully picked up the necklace.
Cradling it gently, I tilted the Hope to catch the light, but the room was mostly in shadow, and the generous blue of the gemstone appeared almost black.
My pulse thumped loudly in my ears as I stepped into the hallway where a lamp was ablaze beneath a large oval mirror on the wall.
Did I dare?
I gazed at myself in the mirror until my eyes became unfocused, my mouth a red slash, my form an indistinct outline. And I couldn’t help myself. Mesmerized, I slipped the most infamous diamond in the world around my neck and fastened the clasp.
I don’t know what I’d expected. A sudden sensation to ripple through me or some premonitory revelation to flash in my mind?
Instead, I felt only the weight of the stunning necklace and its cool metal framework against the tender skin of my neck.
I swayed as if in a trance, watching the light reflect off its facets, searching for the flash of red in its depths that made it so unique.
I squinted, blurring my vision as I imagined those who had worn it before me through the centuries.
Kings, actresses, sultans, and the wealthiest among the wealthy, and now, there was little me. Foolish me.
My gaze refocused abruptly.
Reflected in the mirror behind me stood a figure. Ned. I turned quickly, my mouth open to say something, but the words died on my tongue.
“I gave that to Evie as a wedding gift,” he said quietly. He touched the diamond with his forefinger, traced its outline, and let his finger drift over each of the cushion diamonds along the chain until his fingertip brushed my collarbone.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be wearing this.” I fumbled with the clasp. “I was looking in on Evalyn, and she wasn’t wearing it. It looked like she’d thrown it in the corner… I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were tempted by its beauty. Just as I am tempted by yours.”
My hands fell to my sides. Somewhere inside me, I knew pretty words didn’t and shouldn’t mean much—that Ned was out of his mind at the moment, and I’d had so much whiskey, I was hardly myself—and yet I felt myself drawn to his words and the brush of his finger on my skin.
“I’m ordinary, not beautiful,” I insisted. “I always have been, but I’m fine with that. It’s something I accepted many years ago.”
“You don’t see yourself as you are, Lizzie.”
Words I’d heard before, from a man I loved. My heart squeezed as I stared back at Ned, thinking of one man, missing one man, loving one man, and it wasn’t him.
In that moment, Ned tugged me toward him and pressed his lips against mine. He tasted of whiskey and cigarettes and the kind of longing I recognized in myself that I’d buried for so long. Only that longing wasn’t for him. It wasn’t for this. What am I doing?
I pulled away. “Ned,” I said. “This isn’t right—”
“Lizzie? What are you doing! Ned?” Evalyn shrieked, her voice so shrill it was otherworldly. Her eyes were crazed, her hair a mess. “My diamond,” she gasped. “Why are you wearing it! You! You thief!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, fumbling with the clasp. “It isn’t what you think. I was here to look in on you, to see if you needed anything, and I found the necklace on the floor—”
“You found your way to my husband, too!”
“Calm down, Evie,” Ned said, his words slurred from the whiskey. “Nothing happened, I swear.”
“You were kissing her!” she screamed. “I knew it! And you! First you pretend to be all meek and sullen, and then you start dressing like me and taking over my friends, and now you try to steal my husband and my necklace! The night of the party, when you two were cozy, walking the grass in the moonlight, your giggles at my expense,” she shouted. “I knew you were after my husband.”
“Evalyn, that isn’t true. I swear it.” I tried to take off the cursed necklace, but my hands shook too violently.
“Let me,” Ned said.
“Don’t touch her!” Evalyn said, shoving Ned out of the way. She clawed at my neck.
I yelped in pain as she wrenched at the Hope Diamond, finally unclasping it and taking it from me. “I’m so sorry, Evalyn. It’s not what it looks like. I swear, I—”
“You are not me. You are not his wife!” she screamed.
My own fury began to mount. She had some nerve, behaving as if I were the enemy when she had toyed with me from the beginning.
“I know about Carrie and Julien, and so did you!” I said.
“Why would you hire me, bring me into your home, and befriend me when all this time, the lot of you were hiding the truth?”
She sneered. “I agreed to hire you because Carrie felt so guilty about Julien that she begged me to. Said your business desperately needed help. I did it for her. And frankly, I enjoyed watching her squirm in your presence. She could hardly stand it. Serves her right after all those men fell at her feet like she was some kind of goddess.”
Her jealousy oozed from every word, and I felt sick.
“Evie, you’re out of your mind,” Ned said.
Ned was right; she was out of her mind. We all were in that moment.
“I’m so sorry about Vinnie,” I said, trying to calm her.
“Don’t say his name! Get out! Now! I never want to see you again!” She shoved me, hard.
Surprised, I stumbled forward, landing on my hands and knees.
“Calm down, Evie,” Ned said, gripping her arms and trying to hold her in place.
She screamed and struggled against him like a feral cat, shoving at him, swearing, as tears streaked down her face.
I took the stairs as fast as I could manage and ran through the house, unseeing, toward the door. I stepped outside into the night, the pressure in my chest building until I could scarcely breathe.
I touched my throat where the Hope had once been, where I had felt at once emboldened and strangled by its power.
I didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be her.
I didn’t want any of it or this life. I wanted to be myself, without pretenses and extravagances or jewelry worth more than a human life.
I wanted my simple life back. The one filled with hope and laughter and, most of all, him, my brother.
A sob escaped my lips, and at long last, a deluge of hot tears began. And I walked alone, under the cover of night, toward home.