Chapter 3
I set down the glass and stood.
For half a second, the floor moved under me.
"Mrs. Vale?" someone said.
"Just Claire," I said — and I never took my eyes off her ears as I crossed the room toward them.
My fingers had not even reached Stella's ear before Mason stepped between us.
"Claire. What do you think you are doing?"
Stella shrank back into him, one hand flying to her earring, her face already crumpling.
"Claire, I— if I have upset you, can we not do this here? I will apologize, whatever it is, I am sorry—"
I was not looking at her tears.
I was looking at the two small red stones swinging from her ears.
"Those garnets are my mother's," I said. "Where did you get them?"
Mason's jaw tightened.
"You are mistaken. Stella has had those for months."
"Anyone else might mistake them. I would not."
I kept my voice low — not calm, held.
"There is a worn patch on the back of the right one, where it rubbed against her glove every winter for thirty years. I could find it with my eyes closed. So do not stand here and tell me I am confused."
On her hand.
Because they had been a ring.
Stella's tears spilled right on cue, loud enough for the tables behind us.
"I did not know— Mason said it was just an old ring, that it did not mean anything to anyone— I only said the gold was pretty—"
For one instant, my vision went black.
Ring.
"What did you do to the ring?"
Stella's crying stumbled.
And her friend, hovering at the edge, rushed to smooth it over the way friends do.
"It was so worn you could not even wear it— Stella just loved the gold, so Mason had it melted down."
"The jeweler recast it into the earrings and reset the little stones. It is all new. She really did not mean anything by it—"
Melted down.
My mother's ring.
The gold she wore for thirty years.
The gold she pawned the winter we had nothing and swore she would never lose again.
Melted into the backs of another woman's earrings.
I heard the water glass crack in my grip before I felt it.
"You — melted — it."
I was already stepping toward him, my voice climbing in a way I had not let it in a year.
"You took my mother's ring out of a box and handed it to a jeweler like scrap—"
"Claire. Lower your voice." Mason's hand came up. "People are—"
"People are what?"
The words came out sharp enough that the nearest table went dead still.
"Watching? Let them. You should have thought of that before you melted my mother onto her ears."
For one second, Mason looked at the earrings.
Then at me.
Something moved across his face so fast most people would have missed it.
Guilt.
Then Stella sobbed into his shoulder, and Mason's eyes went to her.
Not to me.
To her.
He did not deny it.
He did not say it was not like that.
He just bent his head and wiped under her eye — the way he had been doing for a year.
"Claire," he said, cold again, "she has apologized. Look at the state of her. What more do you want?"
What more did I want.
"One thing. Something of my mother's, melted onto another woman. And I do not even get to ask."
I lifted my left hand, worked the wedding ring off my finger, and set it on the table between the cracked water glass and the untouched champagne.
"Melt that one too," I said.
The whole room had gone silent.
"Claire—"
"Have your lawyer send the papers."