Chapter 10: Stolen

My mother laughed.

It was a light, bright laugh, and it was the first one I had heard from her in three years.

"Oh, you're thinking of someone else," she said to the old woman. "Chloe's mother was a friend of the family. Any resemblance is a coincidence."

"Beverly, I've been looking at Weatherfords for sixty years," the old woman said.

"And you have a very good eye. Let me get you another glass."

She steered her toward the bar with a hand at her elbow.

Chloe took her arm out of mine.

She did it slowly, and she walked after them with her chin lifted.

I stood on the edge of the stage with the photographer's flash still fading in my eyes.

Eli was staring at the crescent on the back of my ear, and then at Chloe's, and then at nothing.

"It's a coincidence," he said, to himself.

"Sure."

Before I could say anything else, a woman in a Foundation blazer ran up the tent aisle with her hand to her chest.

"Mrs. Weatherford! The brooch is gone."

The quartet stopped in the middle of a phrase.

"Which brooch?" my mother said.

"Your mother-in-law's emerald. The one in the heritage case by the entrance."

My mother turned to the crowd and spoke in the voice of a hostess.

"I'm afraid, friends, we have a small problem. Please stay where you are. Security will be with us in a moment."

Two guards were already at the tent flaps.

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