The Necklace Page 20

  She stumbles over a tower of crumbling cardboard boxes from a long-defunct department store twice tied with twine. She’ll have to tackle those rotting mysteries at some point. Along the back wall is an uninterrupted line of closets, and she decides to start there.

  Opening the first closet takes some muscle, but when she succeeds, she finds it’s lined in cedar and surprisingly clean. Craftsmen being what they were back in the day, the door’s joints are so tight that no dust has reached inside. Hangers present a jumbled mishmash of slipcovers for furniture that no longer exists, a hint of netting, and sequins from faded gowns in tatters, but mostly it’s old uniforms for nurses and maids. Nell fills a trash bag quickly and hefts it onto the landing.

  She loses track of time amid old bedpans, broken cribs, and Christmas decorations with dubious wiring. Louis is running bulging bags down to the Dumpster, bringing her water, bringing her a broom, but mostly staying out of her way. She removes one igneous layer of attic accumulation and then comes to a corner she’s been avoiding.

  At least twenty disintegrating leather steamer trunks are huddled in this corner. They are substantial, with cracked leather strapping, tarnished brass hardware, and faded monograms of Quincys long dead and stamps from voyages never to be taken again. They’re beautiful. They’re filthy with mold. They’re heavy as hell. She despairs at the thought of their bulk going in the Dumpster and then taking up space in a landfill.

  They were made for a time when one didn’t touch one’s bags when traveling, didn’t even pack them. She tests a few and finds them locked, but more are open or the locks are busted, the contents already ransacked. Quincys have nothing on Egyptian tomb raiders. Nell knows the attic has been picked clean of the real loot, so it’s with resignation that she heaves open the hinged tops and finds the trunks are lined in fitted trays. Usually about six of them, dovetail joints tighter than her dining room furniture back home. She imagines the trays filled with clothes wrapped in scented tissue paper, and gives a rueful thought to her recent flight, where she was crammed in a germy seat, her things stuffed in the overhead bin or on the grimy floor under the seat in front of her.

  The empty trunks are easy to deal with, and Louis helps haul them down. By now she’s dusty, thirsty, and a little dispirited. Despite working through lunch and filling nearly half the Dumpster, it doesn’t look like she’s done a thing up here, hasn’t made a dent. She wants food and a shower, or maybe the shower first, preferably with Louis. So with the idea of getting one last thing done before she quits for the day, she hoists open a trunk. It’s buff leather, and lighter straps give it a feminine feel. If a trunk can be gender specific, this one is.

  Opening it, she finds the drawers have been removed, and it’s as if someone has dumped a river of letters into the trunk. The entire interior is filled to the brim with a jumble of envelopes—flowing script in faded brown fountain ink on yellowed envelopes. She can’t resist, and she reaches a gloved hand in, hoping there’s nothing nesting inside, and lets them fall through her hands.

  Nell sifts through the letters, dry and crumbling at the edges, and she uncovers a dark object nestled in the corner. It’s a leather journal, tooled with art nouveau flowers and vines. When she lifts it, the natural crease falls open to the last page with writing. A masculine, pointy scrawl in sepia ink.

  May, my darling—You’ve gone off to ride and so I’m left with my thoughts. I must get them out, I must tell someone, and so I’ll set them down here. Never have my days meant more to me, has life seemed brighter or sweeter than now. Is it only because of the secretive nature of this? No, I think it can’t be. It is the universe realigned, the planet set right on its axis, and we are together. I finally have a taste of what it’s like to have everything I’ve wanted. You’ve left me now, only for moments, and to have that feeling diminished throws my purpose into high relief. My head is filled only with how to solve this. It is my task, as I’m the one who initially set things on this course. How to take us away?

  I love seeing my jewel on you. I know it’s barbaric, but I wish the other thing you wear every day were off your finger. I haven’t dared ask you not to wear it. And so I am satisfied that you wear mine near to your heart. Jewels and gems have been on my mind. You are my treasure. I realize that now.

  I feel compelled to write in a way I haven’t in a very long time.

  Within my mouth rich jewels bloom,

  Cabochons, orient pearls of price.

  Around my neck and over my heart

  Her shimmering golden cord wraps tight.

  Her lips that my soul dies for

  Her eyes that ever speak true

  Her small hands on me, enticing

  My skin aflame, the thrill renewed.

  There’s more, but I feel out of practice. All my writing dropped off so dramatically after I stopped writing to you.

  When I first saw the necklace, I knew it belonged with you. The maharani was showing it off as she danced, and she refused to part with it. But she was a born negotiator, because in the end I offered such an exorbitant price that she was persuaded. Literally a king’s ransom for you. I had to tell Ethan it was a gift. He’d have wondered at my spending money like that. He’d have wanted to repay me for it, and I didn’t want that. I initially thought it would cut my trip short for lack of funds. Then he paid me to continue only so he could take something that was mine. Though I shouldn’t judge his motivations; I’d do anything for you, too. I bought the necklace only with the thought that I’d see you wear it as mine.

  Under very different circumstances.

  I have been haunted by the what ifs, the choices that I could have made differently. I can hardly sleep for thinking. But then I’ve hardly let you sleep, either. If only I hadn’t been so young then. If only I’d seen what was in front of me. It was more than hesitation or cold feet before destiny. It was something I felt I had to do, leaving. But we pay for these things for such a long time, don’t we? That’s what I’ve learned. That the worst mistakes aren’t the ones that hurt you, yourself, though I have been hurt, as I’m sure you can see. The worst mistakes are the ones that hurt the ones you love. And when that happens, if there’s a way to rectify it at all—then you must. You must even if others will be tangentially hurt in the end. If it is in service to your greater fate. Our greater fate. We must

  Here the entry ends, and there are no other writings in the journal.

  She turns the page to a photograph lodged in the spine. Ripped in many pieces and then stuck together on the back with yellowed tape, thin and brittle, it shows a young Indian woman in profile, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and back into her thick braid.

  And even though she is in profile, she is very clearly wearing the Moon of Nizam around her neck.

  With the picture in hand, Nell rereads that last entry. And then every one before it. Written on the corner of the title page, in the same faded ink, is “Ambrose S. Quincy.” Next to it, a pressed violet still retains a trace of its color.

  She’s sure, even with her hazy knowledge of auction house rules, that this will make a pretty package with the necklace, and that it will help prove proper provenance.

  She hears tread on the stairs. “You won’t believe . . .” she starts, the journal still in her hands.

  She shoves it behind her back when she sees that it’s Pansy on the staircase.

  “Won’t believe what?” Pansy asks, eyeing Nell.

  Nell starts to panic. She wants time to think through how to play this, and here Pansy is with her ancient totalitarian presence. “Where’s Louis?” Nell asks. “I thought you were Louis.”

  “He’s digging around in the garden shed for buckets or something. What have you got there?” Pansy leans around Nell, trying to see.

  “Nothing.” Nell feels like a child.

  “For real?” Pansy says, putting her palm out. She’s wearing a gold bracelet covered in scrolling vines.

  When Nell doesn’t move, Pansy steps closer. “Grow up,” s
he says.

  Nell reluctantly hands it over. What else is she supposed to do, exactly? Is she really going to play a game of keep-away?

  After scanning it, Pansy looks up. “Of course this means nothing for anything.”

  “It’s everything. And you know it.”

  “Because it proves he bought it, I guess? You know the argument based on him stealing it was a loser.”

  “Because they had an affair,” Nell says, trying to will Pansy to give the journal back to her.

  “I highly doubt it.”

  “Did we not just read the same thing?”

  “I’m sure it was a very chaste, unrequited sort of thing. It was the twenties.”

  “Judging from that, I’m pretty sure people had sex in the twenties,” Nell says.

  “But not her type of people. I mean, there wasn’t even birth control, I don’t think. Or it was illegal or something. You know what you’re saying? That she . . . that she would . . .”

  “There was birth control, but people had sex before birth control.” As Nell says it, they both stop before she says what is finally so plain. Her mother’s theory supported and justified—history reassembling and dissembling before them both. Nell doesn’t even need to say it. Between the two of them it’s become fact—Ambrose was her mother’s true father, Nell’s grandfather.

  Pansy moves her hand toward the top of the book as if she’s going to rip the page out of the journal. Nell puts her hand out, trying to stop her, but Pansy blocks and turns away. Nell doesn’t want to force the conclusion. Footsteps ring on the stairs amid their tussle.

  “What are we doing?” Louis’s heavy tread on the stairs stops and his big grin that accompanies his silly use of the royal “we” fades. Reading the energy, he says, “Are we doing something we shouldn’t be doing?”

  Pansy puts the journal behind her back, just like Nell did, but Louis just reaches around her.

  He fumbles as he puts one arm around Nell’s waist, holding her close into his side, reading. “You know what this means, right?” He’s nodding toward the page as Nell looks on. She can feel Pansy watching them, wide-eyed. Then he’s digging in his pocket for his phone, calling an associate, and walking away as he’s updating, already discussing angles and strategies. She hears him say “contemporaneous record” and “authenticated purchase.”

  When he hangs up, he looks at Nell. “Did you know?”

  “My mom did, but she never had proof. My dad, too, I mean, he’s the one who told me. She only suspected it because of the family resemblance, but that can be chalked up to anything. This is real proof. I wish she were still here. I wish I could show it to her. She was right.”

  “I still don’t see how any of this makes any difference,” says Pansy, nodding toward Louis’s hands, which are securely wrapped around the brittle leather.

  “No, you wouldn’t, but it makes all the difference in the world for that,” Louis says, nodding toward Nell’s neckline and the Moon.

  THE GOLD BANGLE

  Ambrose approached the closed door to the bedroom and knocked softly. When he didn’t hear anything, he slowly pushed in.

  She was lying across the big tester bed, facedown, wearing a kimono of deepest blue. One arm rested flat on the bed above her head, the wrist encircled by a gold bangle etched with scrolling vines. She didn’t look up when he came in.

  “Mayfair,” he said, reaching down and gripping her bare ankle.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said into the bedding without moving.

  “May-the-fair-one.” Ambrose came and sat next to her on the bed. “You have to come down,” he said softly.

  She rolled over, revealing wet eyes and a red nose, her hair a dark slice at her cheekbone. It was childish, he knew, but he noted that the necklace remained at her throat. He wondered, idly, if she’d bathed in it. A flash of her in the bath clad only in his jewel came to his mind so vividly, it was as if she had. “I’m a mess,” she said.

  He reached in his pocket and handed her his handkerchief. “It’s clean.”

  This made her smile, and she sat up among the pillows, wiping her eyes. “You’d give me a used one?” When she’d caught her breath she said, “I’ll claim headache.”

  Ambrose nodded. “You can’t.”

  “Doesn’t your being up here checking on me confirm everything?”

  “Came upstairs to get my cigarettes. He’s yelling down the line to town.”

  May walked into her dressing room and sat down behind her dressing table, fiddling with crystal pots and silver boxes.

  “You must come down,” he said again, gently. “We have to.”

  “I know,” she said with irritation, leaning forward to dab something under her eyes. Gaining composure, she said, “You saw him when I walked in. He already suspects.” Despite her efforts at cover-up, tears rolled down her face. “I can’t do this.” She ripped a tissue from the box at her elbow. “I made a mistake. You absolutely made a mistake. But I don’t cheat.” Ambrose checked himself from pointing out the obvious. They had both already cheated. “It’s all a hideous lie. And I’m not a liar.”

  “Then we face it and undo it,” he said.

  “Listen to yourself. I can’t just undo this. I’m married to him. I can’t switch brothers like musical chairs.”

  Ambrose closed his eyes. May could be blunt. He knew this. “There’s a lot of history here. Things you don’t understand,” he said.

  “I thought it would change. I thought when we got married there would be a feeling, I guess. I thought I’d forget. That it wouldn’t matter. That he and I could make something more.” He remained silent at this glimpse into her thinking. She was open, and he knew it was time to make his case.

  “Did it never occur to you that he knew you’d feel indebted when he asked you to marry him? That he was playing on your sympathies?”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.” She closed her eyes, as if in pain. “And yes, the thought had crossed my mind.” With a resigned exhale, she said, “You were gone for so long. Are you trying to say he doesn’t really love me?”

  Ambrose was silent.

  “I do love him, you know. I can never hurt him,” she said.

  Ambrose’s throat shut down, hearing her say she loved another.

  “But not the way I love you. Never the way I loved you.”

  Relief washed over him. He gathered her up in his arms. “We have to be honorable. We can’t deceive him. It will hurt a bit, but in the long run it’s better. It’s best we tell him as soon as possible. It’s kinder. Sooner is better.”

  “God, listen to you.”

  “We’re going to hurt people. What else can we do?”

  She took a deep breath.

  “It’s time to be brave,” he continued. “I asked you to do that once, and you wouldn’t. It’s time to do that now.”

  “I won’t be unfaithful.”

  He kissed her, the scent of violets filling his head. “Then we won’t.” And those negatives were their beginning.

  He took a deep breath. “We’ll leave.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “We’ll go west. Santa Barbara, maybe Hollywood.”

  May slumped. Now that he’d said it, he couldn’t see her on the West Coast, either.

  “Running away, that’s your solution to things, isn’t it?”

  She could be biting. He’d learned this, too. But he released the sting of her comment. “You wanted to go away. I mean far away. We’ll leave and let things blow over.” May sat up a little straighter then. “A year or two at least. See every place you’ve ever wanted to see in Europe. Give everyone a chance to calm down, and then we’ll come back. They’ll have no choice but to accept us.”

  “Like we’re on the lam or something?” she said.

  “It’s a big world, May. Come get lost in it with me. Once everyone has calmed down, they’ll see how right we are for each other, how serious we are. No one will be able to deny us. After a while, it’ll
be fact. Let’s do it right this time.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “I know where to go.”

  “No one’s ever denied you anything, have they? That’s what it means to be the favorite son, I guess.”

  “Ethan’s the favorite. Father disapproves of almost everything I do.”

  “He loves you because you do all the shocking things he won’t.”

  “Father doesn’t want to be like me.”

  “But you always get your way,” she said, giving him a halfhearted shove.

  “You should remember that. Now fix yourself up and come down before this becomes a scandal,” he said, pulling her up.

  May wiped her eyes and headed for her bathroom. “Becomes a scandal?” she murmured.

  THE GOLD IPHONE

  Nell sent the auction house the journal entry, and they’d made the Moon of Nizam the centerpiece of the fall jewelry auction. They’d put the gem on the cover of the fancy catalog, overlaid on an image of Ambrose’s poem, which was being offered as part of the lot. The romance of it had attracted media interest. Unprecedented, the gleeful jewelry specialist told Nell after a New York Times interview. They’d tallied up more registered bidders than they’d ever had at one of these sales.

  Nell had been concerned about the publicity, but after Louis made a few calls to the legal department on her behalf, he was satisfied that a sale would go through. They’d heard nothing from the government of India, and word from a trusted source at the embassy assured them that the Indian government wasn’t interested in stopping the sale. It was all too tenuous for Nell, but Louis told her not to question good fortune.

  He’s been guiding her through the legalities of the estate. She’s needed his precise expertise. They’ve spent the last six months flying back and forth, under the pretense of estate business, but really stealing time together. They’d both let his proposal drop. It was a relief, but also a validation of her annoyance. He had been using it as a ploy, a manipulation to get her to stay that night and nothing more, or else why give up so easily? But she’ll give him a pass. She’s not looking to rekindle the offer and accept, so why reopen it?