Chapter 1 - THE EMERALD IN THE MIRROR
The emerald appeared first as a green flash in my vanity mirror.
I was fastening a pearl earring when Sofia stepped behind me to straighten the hem of the black evening wrap I intended to wear to the Whitmore Foundation dinner. She had worked in my house for only three weeks. Quiet. Polite. Nervous around expensive things.
Then she bent forward.
A silver chain slipped from beneath her maid uniform.
At the center hung a large oval emerald.
My hand froze against my ear.
The room seemed to narrow around the mirror.
“That necklace?”
Sofia startled.
I turned so fast my chair struck the vanity.
Her hand flew to the pendant.
“What?”
I crossed the bedroom in three steps and grabbed her wrist before I remembered she was not someone I had the right to touch.
“Where did you get it?”
Her eyes widened.
“My parents left it to me.”
I released her immediately, but my hands were shaking.
The pendant was old silver, not polished white gold. Around the emerald was a thin engraved border of ivy leaves. On the lower right corner of the setting was a tiny dent.
I knew that dent.
My daughter Isabelle made it when she was eleven and dropped her necklace on the stone edge of our swimming pool.
I stumbled toward the dresser.
Sofia whispered, “Mrs. Laurent?”
I ripped open the top drawer and pulled out a velvet jewelry box.
Inside was the twin pendant.
Same green stone.
Same silver ivy.
Same clasp.
When I held the necklaces side by side, Sofia stopped breathing.
“It’s my daughter’s,” I said.
Her face changed.
“What?”
“She died ten years ago.”
I heard myself saying the sentence I had repeated so many times it had become architecture inside me.
My daughter died.
My daughter died.
My daughter died.
Sofia looked from the necklaces to me.
“Then why do I have hers?”
I finally looked at her face instead of the emerald.
Light hazel eyes with a pale gold ring around the pupils.
A faint notch in the left eyebrow.
A small crescent scar beneath her chin.
My daughter had fallen off a bicycle when she was nine and needed three stitches beneath her chin.
I stepped backward.
Sofia touched the scar unconsciously.
“What?”
I whispered the name before I could stop myself.
“Isabelle?”
Sofia went completely still.
Then all the color disappeared from her face.
“That name,” she whispered.
“What about it?”
May you like
She backed away from me.
“My mother used to say it in her sleep.”
