The Necklace They Gave Me Last novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Reporters

I woke up with Dermot's arm across my waist and the sun on the quilt.

For a moment I did not remember anything except how warm I was.

"You said no touching," he murmured against my shoulder.

"I said a lot of things."

"You said them in a very firm voice."

I turned over and kissed him, slowly, and he kissed me back with no hurry at all.

Then the buzzing started.

It was my phone, and his phone, and the doorbell all at once.

Dermot was at the window before I was out of bed.

"Reporters," he said. "Six of them. A van from a news channel."

I pulled his shirt on and went to the front room.

My phone showed a headline from a gossip site.

"Sterrett Heiress Accused of Stealing Family Heirloom."

Under it was a statement from the company, signed by my brother.

"We are saddened to report that Susannah Sterrett removed a priceless family piece from the estate on the night of Legacy Day. We have notified the authorities."

I read it twice.

"It's a lie," I said. "I took nothing out of that house. It was in a safe in Brooklyn for fifteen years."

"It's a good lie," Dermot said. "Nobody can prove where it was."

"I can prove one thing."

I went into my mother's bedroom and took the photograph off the dresser, the one of her in the green dress.

The necklace was locked in the safe behind its steel door, and it would stay there, because my mother had said not before.

Then I put on yesterday's dress and fixed my hair.

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