Chapter 28
It took all of two days for the bloom to fall off the ballet camp rose.
When I tried to convince Lucy that ballet would make her a better and more graceful tennis player, I earned my daughter’s first official eye roll.
Out of desperation, I’d resorted to outright bribery to get her in the car this morning.
After camp, when we stopped at the toy store to make good on my promise, Lucy selected the ungodly expensive Hogwarts Castle LEGO set, and I saw my future flash in front of me.
We got home and I started dinner while she went to work with a painstaking attention to detail that made me puff up with pride.
Over the last year, we’d spent countless hours poring over instruction booklets, sorting pieces, and seeking the perfect building blocks for her creations.
After all those coconstruction efforts, she was graduating to independence.
Lucy had just completed a particularly challenging section of the castle when she squealed, “Mommy, I have an idea!”
Like Lucy, I had also experienced a graduation of sorts, as our recently acquired toaster oven helped me kick my overdependence on the microwave.
Last week, we decided that our brand-new tradition would be Toaster Oven Pizza Thursdays, with an aspirational chopped veggie salad on the side.
The pizza was in the oven already; the salad could wait.
I set down a carrot on the cutting board and called out, “What is it, Jellybean?” Although the rest of my life might be balanced on a knife’s edge, spending time with Lucy was and always would be the best part of every day.
I was determined to focus on the positive.
“We need more wands for the castle,” Lucy said as I peered over at her creation.
“Excellent idea!” I began to rummage through the giant bin of spare LEGO pieces.
“Not there, Mommy. But I think there’s some in my old princess bin.”
“Good thinking.” Lucy had, at long last, outgrown the princess phase last fall, but since kids were the definition of fickle, I’d kept it all. I crawled over to the wall of toys. After pulling out the appropriately labeled bin, I dug around for a tiny wand.
“Let’s dump it all out, Mommy. It’s easier to see.” She wrapped her arms around the bin and heaved it upside down with the grunt of a true tennis player.
I let out a little chuckle at the unexpected sound and then looked down at the heap of princess paraphernalia. A sparkle caught my eye. I did a double take, and then a triple take for good measure.
Because. I. Could. Not. Believe. My. Eyes.
There, buried in the pile, was the necklace Max had given me. My fingers reached for it in slow motion, as though rapid movement might cause it to disintegrate into fairy dust. As I plucked it out, my entire body tingled. “Jellybean, where did this come from?”
With a quick glance, Lucy said, “It was in Sam The Dog’s bed.”
“Really?” I said, kicking myself. All this time I’d been turning the apartment, my car, and my office upside down looking for the necklace and I hadn’t once asked Lucy if she’d seen it.
“Yup.” She nodded, scanning the LEGO pile for a piece. “There’s a hole in his bed, and he hides all kinds of things in there like socks and tennis balls. I found it with Jenny.”
My eyes popped at this newsflash. Jenny was the teenage girl downstairs who I’d hired to stay with Lucy one afternoon the week we moved in so I could run errands without being required to answer a litany of questions, such as, Why are you giving away Daddy’s tennis clothes?
I was too flustered to think this through properly, but I knew I needed this necklace more than I’d ever needed another possession. “Can I keep it? It was actually a gift given to me by a special friend.”
Lucy nodded solemnly. “Is that your phantom necklace from your phantom astronaut?”
“Um, excuse me?” My jaw dropped. “Where did you hear that?” But of course I knew the answer.
“When I slept over at Grandma and Grandpa’s, I heard them talking.” Then she gazed up at me with an earnest expression. “Mommy, what does ‘phantom’ mean?”
Normally nothing made me happier than Lucy asking me to be her human dictionary. But not when the answer made me feel like I was telling on myself. “‘Phantom’ means something that exists only in your imagination,” I said. “But this necklace is not phantom, right?” I held it up for Lucy to admire.
“It’s pretty,” Lucy said, going back to her LEGO project. “You can keep it.”
“Thanks.” Then I tucked the necklace in my pocket, where it proceeded to burn a hole through both fabric and skin for the duration of the evening.
If ever I had supernatural powers, they were on full display tonight as I forcefully and repeatedly redirected my attention from the necklace back to Lucy until she was tucked into bed.
Now I walked into the kitchen, made myself a cup of chamomile tea, and then sat down on the couch and took the necklace from my pocket.
I closed my fingers around its solidity.
Finding this necklace felt like a lifeline.
This necklace was something tangible, something I could hold in my hand and turn over and examine, unlike memories, or two-dimensional texts (and one sext) sent across cyberspace by a scoundrel from a burner app.
I knew it was irrational, and yet this necklace felt like the physical proof I’d been craving that Max or whoever he was—astronaut, con man, or simply the cruelest asshole on earth—had, at a bare minimum, existed outside my imagination.
Which meant that at least I wasn’t crazy-crazy.
I clasped the necklace around the nape of my neck, and shivered with the spontaneous memory of Max’s fingers grazing my skin while I’d held up my hair and tipped my chin forward.
The sheer vulnerability I’d felt in that position had triggered a cascade of swirly emotions.
For the first time in years. And I’d liked it.
No, I’d loved it. And more importantly, after a brief period of incredulity, I’d come to believe his story and that he really cared for me.
In retrospect, though, I’d let a stranger entice me to the mountaintop and then shove me off the edge.
Frannie and Harper—and though it pained me to admit, Rebecca—had tried to warn me that he might not be worthy of my faith.
Yet against all reason and advice from the people I trusted most in this world, and despite some troubling questions of my own, I’d chosen to selectively listen only to the most nostalgic, hopeful, even euphoric voices in my head because I wanted to hold on to Sam, or at least the feeling of being loved like that.
Sadly, none of those people were likely to be all that impressed that I’d solved the Mysterious Case of the Missing Necklace, because it proved absolutely nothing about Max. Except to me. But until I had solid proof of Max’s identity, it was at least a small win in this otherwise brutal week.
Frustration rose within me as I realized the weekend was almost here and Tim’s office still hadn’t engaged a PI. I shot off an email nudging him. Between the ominous guardianship threat and Emily and Harper still breathing down my neck, I had to find Max. And soon.