Chapter 8: The Fake Diamond

Rachel turned it off right there in the ER hallway, with Dottie watching out of one eye.

Stop sharing location? the phone asked her, polite as a butler. Michael Hayes will be notified.

“Good,” Rachel said, and hit it.

Then she kept going, because once she started she couldn’t stop. Settings, Family. Organizer: Michael Hayes. She tried to leave the family plan and the phone told her she couldn’t, the device was managed by the account holder. Managed. Like a rental. She turned off everything she could find. Find My, photo sharing, contacts sync. She would have turned off gravity if there was a toggle.

“You need a lawyer,” Dottie said, eyes closed.

“I know.”

“No. You need a mean one.”

* * *

Monday morning she went back to the women’s intake at seven, like the lady said. The line was out the door and halfway down the block, and when Rachel got to the plexiglass a different woman told her intake took all day. Assessment, caseworker, paperwork. Be here, don’t leave, or lose your place.

Rachel looked at her phone. 7:31. Julian Cross’s coffee at 8:00.

A bed or the only paycheck she had left.

She picked the paycheck. She told herself it was strategy. On the 4 train she kept telling herself until it almost sounded true.

At lunch she hid in the laundry room with the door shut and called lawyers. She found them on G****e, divorce lawyer Westchester property, and she called them in order like she was ordering pizza.

The first one had a receptionist who chewed gum into the phone. “Retainer’s five thousand to start, hon. Is that gonna be a problem?”

The second said seventy-five hundred. The third, a man with a voice like warm butter, asked a few smart questions and then said, “Given the property issues, Mrs. Hayes, I’d need ten to open the file.”

Rachel thanked him and hung up. She looked at the eight dollars and some change in her coat.

Then she looked down at her left hand.

Her wedding ring. A two-carat round diamond, six platinum prongs, with a tiny heart cut into the metal on each side of the setting. The stone was her mother’s. Her grandmother’s first, off a ring from 1952, and her mother kept it in a safe-deposit box her whole life because, she said, a cashier doesn’t wear two carats to ring up Pampers. For their fifth anniversary Michael had it set for her, replacing the little chip he’d proposed with. He got down on one knee all over again on Arthur Avenue, and the whole restaurant clapped, and she cried into her veal.

It was the only thing on earth she still owned that was worth anything.

She twisted it. It came off easy. She’d lost weight this week.

I’ll buy you back, Ma, she thought. With interest.

* * *

Fordham Road at six-thirty was all noise. Sneaker stores blasting bachata out their doors, a guy selling churros out of a cart, buses breathing on the curb. The pawn shop sat between a cell phone place and a nail salon Tessa would have called a crime scene, under a red neon sign that said WE BUY GOLD with the B burned out. WE UY GOLD.

The man behind the counter was maybe seventy-five, in a brown cardigan with leather elbow patches, a jeweler’s loupe hanging on a cord around his neck. A little brass plate by the register said A. BEDROSIAN, PROP.

“Selling or pawning?”

“Selling.” Rachel put the ring on the black velvet pad between them. “I need at least five thousand. I know it’s worth more. I just need it tonight.”

He picked it up, fixed the loupe in his eye, and turned it slowly under the lamp.

Then he got out a little machine with a metal probe, the kind with lights in a row, and touched the probe to the stone.

The lights didn’t move.

He frowned. Wiped the stone on his cardigan. Touched it again. Nothing.

“Is it broken?” Rachel said. “The machine.”

“The machine’s fine.” He set the ring back on the velvet very gently, like he was sorry for it. “This is cubic zirconia, sweetheart. Good one. Nice cut. The band’s sterling with a rhodium plate, made to look like platinum.” He sighed through his nose. “Forty dollars. And that’s me being nice.”

Rachel laughed. She actually laughed, one short ugly bark, and the girl getting a phone screen fixed next door looked over.

“No,” she said. “No, it’s real. It was appraised. My husband had it appraised, he showed me the paper.”

Mr. Bedrosian didn’t answer. He was looking at the ring again. Leaning in close. At the side of the setting. At the tiny heart cut into the metal. His face changed.

“Where’d you get this?”

“My husband had it set. Six years ago. A jeweler in the Diamond District. The stone was my mother’s.”

“No. Not six years.” He tapped the little heart with the tip of a pen. “This, I know. This setting, I’ve seen. Hearts in the gallery, six prongs. Unusual.” He took the loupe out of his eye. “I made this one.”

Rachel stared at him.

“Two years ago. A man brings in the real ring, the platinum one, a real two-carat stone, very nice, F color, maybe VS1. He pawns it. Cash. And he pays me extra, rush job, to make him a copy in silver with a CZ. Same hearts. Same everything. He says his wife will never know the difference.” Mr. Bedrosian shrugged one shoulder. “He never came back to redeem it. After four months it goes to auction. I bought it at my own auction, like everybody does, and I sold the stone to a dealer in Philadelphia.”

Rachel’s hand was flat on the glass counter. She couldn’t feel the glass.

“What did he look like.”

“Handsome. Nice coat. Talked to me like I was the help.” Mr. Bedrosian reached under the counter and pulled out a big green ledger, the old-fashioned kind, and started flipping pages. “Parked a black Range Rover in the bus lane out front. Got a ticket while he was in here. Very upset. You’d think somebody shot his dog.”

He turned the ledger around and put his finger on a line. A date in October, two years back. A ticket number. A driver’s license number. A signature she’d seen on birthday cards for eleven years.

M. Hayes.

Rachel snapped a picture of the page. Her hands were perfectly steady. She’d think about that later, how steady they were.

“Lady.” Mr. Bedrosian’s voice went softer. He closed the ledger. “I’m sorry. There’s more, and you’re gonna want to know it, so I’ll just tell you.”

“Tell me.”

“Your husband pawned your real diamond two years ago,” he said. “He came back the next week and bought a smaller one. For a blonde.”