She looked at me.
There was no anger in her eyes.
There was no hatred.
There was only a sadness so deep it felt like a hand pressing on my chest.
One of the babies shifted and made a small, wet sound.
Emily laid her palm over the tiny back, the way she used to cup the back of my neck.
Then she stepped around the twenty as if it were a puddle, and walked on.
“Drive,” Ashley said, and raised the window.
“Michael. Drive.”
I drove.
God help me, I drove.
I should tell you how I got there.
Fourteen months earlier, my mother had called me at the office, her voice shaking.
My grandmother’s Cartier necklace, the one with the sapphire drop, was missing from her jewelry box.
She had found it, she said, in Emily’s overnight bag.
Then came the photographs.
Emily at a restaurant, laughing, with a man’s hand on her back.
