6. Maya
— ? —
Maya
The charity gala is mandatory.
Oliver’s company is a platinum sponsor, which means we’re expected to show up, smile for photos, and pretend we’re the perfect power couple while wealthy strangers congratulate themselves on their generosity.
I’ve done this dozens of times over the years.
I know exactly how to hold my champagne glass, how to laugh at unfunny jokes, how to make small talk about nothing while my feet ache in heels I despise.
Today, though, I’m dreading it more than usual.
I choose my dress carefully: burgundy, floor-length, elegant but not attention-seeking.
A uniform for a war I’m not sure I can win.
My grandmother’s ruby earrings would have been perfect with it, would have given me something of hers to hold onto while I navigate this world I’ve never quite belonged to.
But the earrings are gone. Like the necklace. Like my peace of mind.
I settle for simple diamond studs instead and tell myself it doesn’t matter.
Oliver is waiting in the foyer when I come downstairs, looking devastating in his tuxedo.
The sharp lines of the jacket emphasize his shoulders, the crisp white shirt a perfect contrast against his dark features.
For one moment, I let myself remember why I fell for him: the sharp jaw, the black eyes, the way he carries himself like he owns every room he enters.
He used to look at me like I was the only woman in the world.
Now he looks at his phone.
“Ready?” he asks without glancing up.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Amelia’s not coming,” he adds, finally pocketing his phone and offering me his arm. “I told her it was a work event. Donors and board members only.”
I should feel relieved. Instead, the familiar twist of anxiety coils in my gut, the sense that something is wrong even when I can’t see what it is.
“Good,” I say carefully. “That’s appropriate.”
He offers his arm. I take it. We walk to the car like the perfect couple we’re supposed to be.
The gala is being held at the Caldwell Estate, a sprawling mansion that makes our house look modest by comparison.
Crystal chandeliers throw fractured light across marble floors.
Waiters in white gloves carry silver trays of champagne and canapés through crowds of glittering guests.
The women drip diamonds; the men wear watches that cost more than most people’s houses.
This is Oliver’s natural habitat. He moves through it like a shark through warm water, graceful, confident, slightly predatory. People gravitate toward him. They always have.
I accept a glass of champagne and scan the room, cataloging faces while Oliver works the crowd.
Board members I recognize from quarterly dinners.
Major donors I’ve made small talk with at previous events.
Oliver’s business associates and their perfectly polished wives, all of us playing our parts in this elaborate performance of wealth and influence.
The wife from last week’s dinner party catches my eye across the room, the silver-haired society matron who greeted Amelia as Mrs. Vance. She’s surrounded by a cluster of women, all of them mid-laugh, and when she sees me looking, her smile tightens almost imperceptibly before she turns away.
I’ve been talked about. I can feel it in the room, in the way certain conversations pause when I drift too close, in the sideways glances that slide away when I try to meet them. Word of my “episode” at last week’s dinner has clearly made the rounds.
Oliver steers me toward a cluster of foundation board members, his hand warm at the small of my back. We make the rounds together, handshakes and air kisses and the same meaningless pleasantries I’ve exchanged a thousand times before.
“Maya, you look stunning tonight,” says a woman whose name I should remember but don’t.
“Thank you. You’re too kind.”
“That dress is divine. Is it vintage?”
“Just something I found.” I smile until my face aches.
Oliver is deep in conversation with a silver-haired man about tax implications of charitable giving, and I’ve just excused myself to find the ladies’ room when I see her.
Amelia.
She’s across the ballroom, on the arm of the silver-haired society matron from the dinner party, the woman she charmed over my table, wearing a silver dress that catches the light with every movement.
Her hair is pinned up, not a strand out of place.
She looks like she belongs here, like she’s always belonged here, in this world of old money and older grudges.
And in her ears, catching the chandelier light with unmistakable fire, are my grandmother’s ruby earrings.
For a moment, I can’t move. Can’t breathe.
Can’t do anything but stare at those earrings.
The ones my grandmother wore on her wedding day, the ones my mother pressed into my palm after the funeral with tears streaming down her face, the ones that disappeared from my jewelry box the morning of Oliver’s dinner party.
They’re RIGHT THERE. On her ears. In front of everyone.
“Oliver.” I grab his arm, my nails digging into his sleeve hard enough to leave marks. “Look.”
He follows my gaze, his brow furrowing. “Is that Amelia? I told her this was a work event. I specifically said…”
“The earrings.” My voice comes out strangled, barely recognizable as my own. “Look at her earrings.”
“What about them?”
“Those are my grandmother’s rubies. The ones that went missing before the dinner party. She’s wearing them right now, Oliver. In public. In front of everyone.”
Oliver sighs. Actually sighs, like I’m being tedious. Like this is an inconvenience rather than proof of everything I’ve been trying to tell him for weeks.
“Maya, there are thousands of ruby earrings in the world. You can’t just assume…”
“I know my grandmother’s earrings.” My voice rises despite my best efforts to stay calm.
Several nearby heads turn in our direction, conversation faltering.
“I’ve been looking at them my entire life.
I could pick them out of a lineup of a thousand pairs.
Those are mine, Oliver. She stole them from my jewelry box, and now she’s wearing them like a trophy. ”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I will not keep my voice down.”
More heads are turning now. The silver-haired board member has stopped mid-sentence, his attention shifting to us. Oliver’s jaw tightens with the familiar expression of a man whose wife is embarrassing him in public.
“We’ll discuss this later,” he says through gritted teeth. “This isn’t the time or the place…”
“When is the time? When is the place?” I pull my arm free from his attempt to steer me away. “I’m done waiting for later. I’m done being gaslit, dismissed, told I’m imagining things. Those are my earrings, and I’m going to get them back.”
I stride across the ballroom before he can stop me.
The crowd parts around me, from surprise or from the look on my face, I can’t tell. Amelia sees me coming. Her expression shifts in quick succession: surprise, then calculation, then something that looks almost like satisfaction.
Like she’s been waiting for this moment. Like she planned for exactly this to happen.
“Maya!” She steps forward with her arms extended, like we’re old friends reuniting after years apart.
“What a lovely surprise! Oliver told me this was a work event, donors only. I ran into our friend from dinner,” she gestures to the silver-haired matron, who’s watching this exchange with avid interest, “and she absolutely insisted I come as her guest. I hope that’s alright? ”
“Those earrings.” I ignore her pleasantries, her performance, the concern she’s manufacturing for her audience. “Where did you get them?”
She touches one ear, her face a mask of innocent confusion. “These old things? They’re just something I’ve had for years. A gift from my mother when I turned twenty-one. Why do you ask?”
“Those rubies were in my jewelry box last week, and now you’re wearing them.”
The crowd around us has gone quiet. I can feel eyes on me from every direction, curious, judgmental, hungry for drama. This is what these people live for. Scandal among their own. Something to whisper about over their next champagne brunch.
Amelia’s face crumples into wounded bewilderment.
“Maya, I don’t understand. These earrings are mine.
I’ve had them for over a decade. My mother gave them to me before she passed.
” Her voice wavers artfully. “I don’t know why you’re doing this.
Why you’ve been so hostile since the moment I arrived.
I’ve tried so hard to be helpful, to stay out of your way, and you just keep attacking me… ”
“Because you’re stealing from me!” My voice echoes across the ballroom, bouncing off marble and crystal. “First the necklace, now the earrings. You’ve been taking my things and making me look crazy when I try to tell anyone.”
“Maya.” Her voice drops to a wounded whisper, but it carries perfectly in the hushed room. “I haven’t taken anything. I would never. I don’t know what’s happening to you, but these accusations are… they’re really hurtful. And honestly, they’re starting to scare me.”
Tears spill down her cheeks. Perfect, crystalline tears that never touch her expertly applied makeup.
The whispers around us grow louder. I catch fragments drifting through the crowd. “Poor thing,” “clearly unwell,” “must be so uncomfortable,” “Oliver’s wife, apparently,” and realize with dawning horror that they’re not talking about Amelia.
They’re talking about me.
A hand closes around my elbow. Oliver. His grip is firm and inexorable as he steers me away from Amelia, from the crowd, from the disaster I’ve just created.
“That’s enough.”
“She’s wearing my grandmother’s…”
“I said enough.” He turns to the crowd with a polished, apologetic smile, the one he uses in business when he’s smoothing over someone else’s mistake. “I’m so sorry, everyone. My wife has been under a great deal of stress lately. Please excuse us.”