The Necklace They Gave Me Last novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: What He Refused

My father woke at dawn with a tube in his arm and a stent in his heart.

The doctor said he would live, and that if I wanted him to keep living, I should not give him another night like that one.

I sat in the chair by his bed in my evening dress, with the green stone in my lap.

He turned his head and looked at me for a long time.

"Is your brother in a cell?" he said.

"Yes."

"Is Pauline?"

"The detectives have her. She won't make bail until Monday."

He shut his eyes.

"Good," he said. "I mean that. I don't want you to think I'm sorry."

"I wasn't going to think it."

"I need to tell you what I did, so that you don't have to learn it from someone else."

"I'm listening."

"Fifteen years ago, the week your mother died, the founder's necklace vanished from the case in my study. I looked for a day. Then I stopped looking."

I held very still.

"I told the board I had sold it for the trust's sake. I could not say that I had lost the family's oldest piece on my watch."

"So you lied to protect your name."

"Yes."

"And Mama hid it herself."

"She must have. She never told me anything she didn't mean me to find in the end."

His mouth shook.

"There's one more thing. Three years ago, Dermot asked me where you were, the morning after the pool house. I told him you'd left for Boston at dawn."

"That was true."

"I said it with a little smile. Pauline had asked me to." His voice dropped. "I knew he'd been waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs. I let him think what he thought."

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