The Diary of an Unloved Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: My Mother's Pearls

At the Endicotts' Christmas party Margery takes her dead mother's pearls off Keira's neck in front of two hundred guests and tells the room why she's leaving, and Winslow's mother summons her to the library.

I pulled my elbow out of his hand.

"Then I'll spend five years telling everyone why."

"Tell them what? That I brought girls home? Half this city's husbands do."

"That you carried one out of a fire and left me on the floor."

Something flickered in his face and closed again.

"You were fine," he said. "Someone got you out."

"Someone did. It wasn't you."

I left him under his great-grandfather and went down the steps into the snow.

I slept that week in my old bedroom on the top floor of my father's house.

The heat was off below the third floor.

I had a space heater, a kettle and a camp bed, and the smoke smell in everything I owned.

On Wednesday morning Moira climbed four flights with a pot of soup wrapped in a towel.

She was out of breath at the top.

She stood in the doorway in her old navy cardigan, flour on the pocket.

"I bought the chicken myself," she said. "Before you ask."

"I wasn't going to ask."

She put the pot on my father's old desk and took two bowls out of her bag.

She'd brought my blue one, the one with the chip.

She'd known which bowl I liked since I was eight.

We ate without talking for a while.

The soup was the same soup she'd made every time I was sick in my life.

I hated how much I wanted it.

"I'm staying at my sister's," she said at last. "I wanted you to know where I was."

"Thank you."

"Margery, I never wanted Keira near him. I told her so."

"For four months you told her so, and for four months you told me nothing."

Moira put her spoon down.

"She's my baby."

"I know."

That was the whole of it.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and started packing up the bowls.

At the door she stopped with her back to me.

"You should know something before Saturday."

"I'm not going on Saturday."

"Mr. Winslow took the jewelry box out of your mother's dresser the morning after the fire. For safekeeping, he said."

My spoon stopped halfway to my mouth.

"Keira's been trying things on since Monday. She means to wear the pearls to the party."

She meant my mother's pearls.

They were three strands, with a clasp shaped like a little gold shell.

My father gave them to her the day I was born, and she wore them every Christmas until she died, the winter I turned eighteen.

I'd worn them on my wedding day because she couldn't be there.

Moira went down the stairs without another word.

On Saturday night I wore black.

I put my hair up and let the sling go.

The bandage showed under my sleeve, and I let that show too.

The Endicott house was lit up from the cellar to the roof.

There was a tree in the front hall two stories high and a string quartet on the landing.

Two hundred people stood in the double drawing room with champagne in their hands.

Half of them had been at my wedding.

I gave my coat to the maid and walked in.

The room didn't go quiet, exactly.

It went careful.

People touched each other's arms and looked toward the windows.

Winslow stood by the fireplace with his parents.

Keira stood beside him in a white satin dress.

My mother's pearls lay against her collarbones, all three strands.

She saw me and her hand went to her throat.

Then she smiled and leaned into Winslow.

I crossed the room.

I didn't hurry.

People stepped out of my way and then turned to follow me with their eyes.

Winslow's mother saw me coming and set her glass down on the mantel.

"Margaret. How nice that you could make it."

"Good evening." I looked at Keira. "Those are mine."

Keira laughed, a high little laugh.

"Winslow gave them to me."

"Winslow doesn't own them. My father gave them to my mother."

"They were in the house," Winslow said. "They were in a fire. I took them for safekeeping."

"And kept them safe around her neck."

Somebody behind me snorted into a champagne glass.

Keira's eyes filled on cue.

"I didn't know, Margery. Honestly. He said they were family pieces."

Over her shoulder I saw Moira.

Winslow's mother had borrowed her from her sister's for the night to help with the coats and trays.

She was standing by the dining room doors with a tray of glasses, very white.

Keira saw her too.

"Mom," Keira said, too loudly. "Tell her. Tell her they're just old Endicott pearls."

Everybody near the fireplace turned to look at the housekeeper.

Moira looked at her daughter.

Then she looked at me.

Her tray trembled, and the glasses chimed against each other.

"They were Mrs. Cabot's," Moira said. "I fastened them on her myself, every Christmas, for ten years."

Keira's mouth fell open.

Nobody in that room had ever heard Moira raise her voice.

She hadn't raised it now.

She'd only said it clearly, so that it carried to the windows.

I stepped behind Keira and found the little gold shell at the back of her neck.

She went rigid but she didn't stop me.

The clasp opened under my fingers the way it always had.

I lifted the strands off her and held them in my good hand.

They were still warm from her skin.

Winslow's mother had gone the color of the white roses on the mantel.

I turned to the room.

Two hundred faces looked back at me.

"Some of you have heard I'm leaving my husband," I said. "Here's why."

Winslow said my name, low and sharp.

I didn't look at him.

"He left his wife in the fire and carried her out instead."

Winslow laughed, short and cold. "Margery is upset. She was in shock that night."

An old man by the piano cleared his throat.

He lived at number nine on the square, three doors down from my father's house.

"I was on my steps in my dressing gown, Winslow," he said. "I watched you set that girl down in the snow and stand there."

Winslow's jaw went tight.

"It was a fireman who went back in for your wife," the old man said. "Not you."

Somebody near the windows said, "Good God."

Keira started to cry for real.

Nobody went to her.

"I don't want his money," I said. "I don't want his name. I want my mother's pearls, and I have them."

I put them in my evening bag and closed the clasp.

"Merry Christmas."

I'd made it as far as the front hall when a hand closed on my wrist.

It wasn't Winslow's.

It was his mother's, thin and cold and stronger than it looked.

She didn't look at me.

She looked at the door, where three guests had stopped with their coats half on.

"The library," she said. "Now. Winslow still has your papers."

← 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