Chapter 3
Naomi
Ididn't call the jeweler.
I almost did. Twice. The first time I got as far as dialing — Bellamy & Crane, the number printed right there on the receipt I'd smoothed flat and hidden in the zippered pocket of my purse where Aaron would never look — and I sat with my thumb over the green button until the screen dimmed and went dark on its own.
The second time I actually drove downtown.
I found the shop, gold letters on frosted glass, a discreet little window with one necklace on a velvet stand, and I parked across the street and looked at it for eleven minutes and then I drove home.
Because calling meant asking, and asking meant hearing, and I wasn't ready to hear.
So I built a new story instead. He'd had it engraved after I saw it — our initials, the date, something. That was why the box was gone from the shelf and why there'd been no engraving on the pendant when I held it. The receipt note even said so. Engraving to follow.
See how good I was? I could take the exact piece of paper that should have terrified me and turn it into a love letter. I'd had years of practice making Aaron's silences mean whatever I needed them to mean. Two more days was nothing.
I'd like to tell you some part of me knew. That underneath the stories there was a woman with her eyes open. But the truth is I was working very hard not to know, and I was winning. It was easier not knowing.
So when Tia texted Thursday morning — lunch?
the thing at the Whitfield, I RSVP'd us both weeks ago, don't you dare bail — I went.
I even looked forward to it. The Whitfield luncheon was one of those charity things Aaron's world floated through, silent auction, chicken or salmon, women in good dresses writing checks.
Tia loved them. I tolerated them for her.
And I figured a room full of people might quiet the low static that had been running under my skin since the closet.
I got there first and saved us two seats near the windows.
Tia came in ten minutes late, the way she always did, scanning the room before she found me — and she looked good.
Better than good. New blowout, lips done, a wine-colored dress I hadn't seen before.
She'd been glowing lately, I realized. For weeks.
I'd chalked it up to a new skincare thing she kept promising to send me.
She dropped into the chair beside me, kissed my cheek, and reached for the water. "Sorry, sorry, parking is a nightmare. Have I missed anything? Is the salmon or the chicken the safe bet this year?"
"Salmon," I said. "Always the salmon."
The women at our end of the table had moved on to the only subject that ever really held a table like this: who was with whom.
"Did you hear about Allie?" one of them said, lowering her voice to make sure we'd all lean in. "Engaged. To that surgeon. The one with the house on the lake."
There was a chorus of appreciative noise, the kind women make when someone else lands well.
"Honestly, where does she find them," another sighed. "All the good ones are married or hiding. It's a wasteland out there."
"Not all of them." The first woman ticked one manicured finger. "Quinn Holland's still single. Still gorgeous. Still richer than God."
"Quinn Holland," someone breathed, like the name alone was dessert.
The table ooh and ahhed at the sexy entrepreneur, then moved on.
Tia turned toward me to say something else, and the pendant around her neck caught the light from the window.
At first my brain did the merciful thing and refused to see it. A necklace, it noted, mildly, the way you'd note the weather. Green stone, gold chain. Pretty. Lots of women wore emeralds. It was practically a color of the season. That was all.
Then I looked again, because I couldn't not look. Teardrop-cut. That specific green, neither too blue nor too yellow, the exact shade I'd have chosen out of any tray in any shop. The chain so fine the stone looked like it was floating just under the hollow of her collarbone.
And then the light shifted as she moved, and I saw the gold above the setting — the small, twisting flourish worked into the metal, almost like a leaf curling around the stone.
The room went silent and roaring with static all at once.
That was the necklace I’d found in my closet, the one I’d thought my husband was going to give me for our anniversary. Except, all I got that evening was a card with eight words on it.
I’d held that necklace. I’d stood in my closet, turning it in the light, and tracing that exact curl of gold with my thumb. Then lifted it to my own neck and thought it looks like it was made for me.
And I’d celebrated the fact that my husband had finally thought of me.
I’d been so excited. And then so disappointed.
And now, it was around my best friend’s neck.
My hands went cold in my lap. The table seemed to tilt very slightly, the way a boat does when someone steps to one side. Somewhere far away Tia was still talking, her mouth moving, sound coming out of it—
"—so I told him he could either fix it or refund it, and honestly, Naomi, you should've seen his—" She stopped. "You okay? You've gone white."
I made myself look at her face instead of her neck. I made my mouth work.
"That's a beautiful necklace," I said.
Something flickered behind her eyes. Fast. Gone. If I hadn't been looking straight at her, I'd have missed it.
"Oh — this?" Her hand came up and touched the pendant, and I watched her make a decision. "Thank you. It's kind of an impulse thing, honestly. I saw it and I just — you know how I get." She laughed, light, easy, practiced. "Treat yourself, right?"
Treat yourself.
An emerald necklace. A four thousand, two hundred dollars necklace. I knew because the receipt I’d found in my husband’s jacket was still tucked into my journal.
"Where'd you find it?" I asked. My voice came out perfectly steady. I was almost proud of it.
"Oh, God, some little place, I don't even remember the name." She waved a hand and reached for her wine. "You know me and shopping."
I did know her. I'd known her since we were nineteen. I knew the little place was called Bellamy & Crane, and I knew exactly how much it cost, and I knew she was lying to my face over a plate of salmon with the sun in her hair.
The static in my ears suddenly went quiet. Everything went quiet.
Idon't remember most of the luncheon. I remember writing a check to a cause I couldn't have named. I remember Tia's laugh from a great distance, and the salmon I didn't eat, and the careful, casual way she kept her chin angled so the light stayed off the pendant for the rest of the meal.
She knew what I'd seen. She could have taken it off in the car. She could have worn anything else in the world. But she'd worn it here, to sit beside me, and when I'd looked right at it she'd chosen the lie without a flicker of hesitation.
Which meant she'd lied to me before. But how many times?
I waited until we were saying goodbye on the sidewalk, both of us fishing for our keys, before I asked the other thing. I kept it light. I kept it the way she'd keep it.
"Hey — random. Are you seeing anyone these days?" I bumped her shoulder with mine, the way I had a thousand times. "You've been all glowy lately. Somebody's putting a smile on your face."
She laughed, and it was perfect, and it was warm, and she looked me dead in the eye.
"God, I wish." She rolled her eyes and gave a little laugh, rueful, perfect.
"You know I've been throwing myself at Quinn Holland for actual years and getting nowhere.
That's my love life. Chasing a man who won't look at me.
It's been a desert, Naomi, you have no idea.
" She squeezed my arm. “Oh, I almost forgot. What did Aaron get you for your anniversary? You never did text me.”
"Oh yeah, right," I said. "I'll text you when I get a nice photo of it." I lied.
Something about her words didn’t sit right, and for a moment, I wondered if she’d done this on purpose. She’d known how excited I’d been about the box I’d found. She hadn’t known I’d opened it. Did she think there were two boxes? One for her and one for me? Or was she rubbing it in my face?
I got in my car. I watched her walk to hers — wine-colored dress, new blowout, my necklace at her throat — and I sat very still with my hands on the wheel long after she'd driven away.
I wasn't crying. That surprised me. I'd have thought I would cry.
Instead I felt something I hadn't felt in years — since before I'd learned to make myself small enough to fit inside Aaron's life.
I felt angry.
And anger, I was discovering, wanted proof. So I drove home, and I made dinner, and I waited for my husband, because there was one more thing I needed to see with my own eyes before I let myself believe the whole of it.
Aaron got in at eight. Tie loose, that closed-door look on his face. He kissed the top of my head on his way to the fridge, same as always.
"How was your day?" I asked, easy, stirring something on the stove I don't remember making.
"Long. You know." He cracked a sparkling water. "Yours?"
"Went to the Whitfield thing with Tia." I kept my back to him, kept my voice light as air.
"Oh — hey. Whatever happened with that box?
The one you had in the closet." I turned, just enough to watch his face.
"I wasn't snooping, I promise, I went for the blanket and it was right there.
I figured it was for our anniversary and it just — never showed up. Did you return it or something?"
For a moment nothing moved in him at all.
Then he smiled — the smile he used on clients, the one that arrived a half-second too late to be real — and shook his head.
"Oh, that." He waved the bottle. "Yeah. It was going to be for you, but the setting was crooked, the whole thing was a mess. I took it back. Wasn't worth giving you junk." He shrugged, like it cost him nothing. "I'll find you something better. Promise."
Wasn't worth giving you junk.
I looked at my husband, who had bought a four-thousand-dollar emerald and lied to my face about returning it, and I thought of Tia at lunch with that same emerald catching the sun, and I understood that I had watched two people I loved look me dead in the eye and lie on the very same day, over the very same stone.
"Sure," I said. I turned back to the stove so he wouldn't see my face. "No rush."
He went up to shower.
I stood in the kitchen until the water started running overhead, and then I dried my hands very carefully on the dish towel, and I picked up my phone.
I didn't call Aaron. I didn't call Tia.
I opened a search bar, and I typed three words I never in my life imagined typing.
Private investigator. Discreet.