She Jumped Into His Pool and Blamed Me, So I Left Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Locket

Valerie goes back for her grandmother's locket and finds Lila wearing it at breakfast; Judith offers a check and Valerie refuses it in front of the staff.

I told myself I was going back for one thing.

My grandmother's gold locket was in the top drawer of Bennett's nightstand.

I had taken it off before the party because the chain caught on the neckline of my dress.

It held her photo, and it was the only thing of hers that I owned.

"I'll wait in the truck," Mitchell said at the end of the drive. "Fifteen minutes."

"You don't have to come in."

"I wasn't going to."

I walked up the front steps in yesterday's dress with a bandage on my heel.

The housekeeper opened the door before I knocked, looked at my face, and stepped back without a word.

Voices came from the breakfast terrace at the back of the house.

I went through the hall and out the French doors.

Judith sat at the head of the long table with her coffee and a folder beside her plate.

Bennett sat to her right in a clean white shirt, his hair still damp.

Lila sat across from him in a pale blue robe with her left wrist in a white brace.

Around her neck, on a thin gold chain, hung my grandmother's locket.

I stopped walking.

Bennett stood so fast his chair scraped the stone.

"Val. Thank God. I've been calling you all night."

"You told me to go," I said. "At the pool."

"I told you to say sorry." He came around the table and took my hands. "It's not the same thing. Sit down and eat something."

"That's mine," I said, and I looked at Lila's neck.

Lila touched the locket with two fingers.

"Bennett said I could wear it," she said, in her small voice. "He said it would cheer me up. I'm in so much pain, Valerie."

"Take it off."

"I can't lift my arm that high." She turned her wet brown eyes to Bennett. "She's so angry. I'm scared of her."

I looked at Bennett.

He gave my hands a squeeze, and his voice came out low and kind.

"Let her keep it for now, Val. Just until things calm down. It's a necklace. We'll sort it all out after you've made things right."

"It was my grandmother's."

"I know. I'll get it back to you myself, I swear." He smiled. "I've got you."

I had heard him say that more than a hundred times in fourteen months.

I had never once heard what came after it.

Judith put down her cup.

"Sit, Ms. Marrin," she said. "I'll be brief."

She slid the folder across the table, and a check slipped halfway out of it.

It was made out to me for fifty thousand dollars.

"That's for the clinic's inconvenience and your trouble," Judith said. "Sign the apology my lawyer prepared. Post it tonight under your own name, and the matter is closed."

"I didn't push her."

"You were standing next to her." She did not raise her voice. "Ninety people saw you stand there."

"I was holding two glasses."

"Then you should have held them more carefully."

Lila made a small sound that might have been a laugh, and she turned it into a sniffle.

The housekeeper stood in the doorway with a coffee pot and did not move.

Two gardeners had stopped working at the edge of the lawn.

Every one of them was watching me.

I looked at the check.

Fifty thousand dollars was more than I'd saved in six years.

I put one finger on it and slid it back across the table until it stopped against Judith's saucer.

"No," I said.

"Val," Bennett said.

"I'm not posting an apology for something I didn't do. And I want the locket."

"You are making this very hard for yourself," Judith said.

"She's making it hard for everyone," Lila whispered.

"Take it off her neck, Bennett."

He rubbed his forehead.

"Val, please. Don't do this in front of everyone. She has a sprained wrist."

"She has my grandmother's locket."

A shadow fell across the table.

Mitchell stood in the open French doors with his keys in his hand.

His mother looked at him.

He looked at Lila's throat, and then at his brother.

"It's been fifteen minutes," he said.

Nobody answered him.

He said it again, quieter. "Valerie. Truck."

I could have stayed and screamed.

I could have grabbed Lila's chain and torn it off her neck, in front of the staff, with Judith's coffee going cold.

That was what they wanted me to do, and I knew it.

So I turned around and walked out with nothing in my hands.

Bennett called my name twice behind me.

I did not look back.

In the truck I sat with my fists in my lap and watched the gate come toward us.

My phone rang on the dashboard before we reached it.

Phoebe.

"Val," my sister said. Her voice was thin and fast. "There are two guys with cameras outside our building, and one of them just asked me if I'm the sister of the pool girl."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend