Chapter 14: The Bracelet

Monday morning returned Emma to the nonprofit with the comforting kind of ordinary she'd missed.

No cameras waited outside today. Only volunteers carrying boxes toward the donation room, and someone arguing with a delivery driver about where to unload winter coats.

Much better.

Rachel caught up with her halfway down the corridor. "You're just in time."

"That doesn't sound promising."

"We're clearing the storage room before the new donations arrive."

"So glamorous."

"You married a billionaire. I figured you'd forgotten how cardboard boxes work."

"I've considered outsourcing them."

Rachel snorted. "Liar."

"I know."

The word came more easily than Emma expected. Perhaps laughter left something behind.

The storage room smelled faintly of dust and old paper. Shelves stretched floor to ceiling, filled with toys, books, blankets, and donations that had slipped through years of inventory.

Rachel handed her a pair of gloves. "East wall is yours."

"What did I ever do to you?"

"You showed up on time."

For the next hour they worked mostly in silence. Boxes moved from one pile to another. Expired supplies discarded. Usable items labeled again.

It was quiet work. Honest work. The sort that asked for hands instead of headlines.

Emma found she preferred it.

Near the back of one shelf sat a faded box marked JEWELRY DONATIONS.

She carried it to the table. Inside were tangled necklaces, single earrings missing their partners, broken watches, and velvet pouches that had long since lost whatever they were meant to protect.

One small silver pouch caught her eye, its drawstring frayed with age.

She loosened it.

Empty.

For reasons she couldn't quite explain, she smiled.

"You remember?" Rachel asked.

"I used to have a bracelet."

"The silver one? With the little star?"

Emma nodded. "I wore it almost every day. Until the night at the hospital. Six years ago."

"You cried over that bracelet."

"I absolutely did."

"It cost, what, twenty dollars?"

"Twenty-eight."

"I stand corrected."

"It wasn't about the money." Emma turned the empty pouch over once. "It was my mother's. My aunt had the star engraved after she died."

Rachel's smile faded. "I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago."

Not long enough, though. Some things never really became old memories. They just became quieter ones.

Rachel squeezed her shoulder. "We'll probably never know where it ended up."

"No." Emma smiled again, smaller this time. "I hope somebody found it."

She tucked the pouch back into the box and reached for the next one.

By late afternoon the storage room looked almost recognizable.

"I vote coffee," Rachel said.

"I second that."

Emma's phone buzzed on the way to the kitchen. Nathan.

"Mrs. Kingsley."

"That formal? Should I be worried?"

"No. Mr. Kingsley asked whether you'd be home for dinner."

"He could have called."

"He was in a meeting."

That sounded like him.

"There's one more thing," Nathan said. "Your father called this office this morning. He asked for your number directly, which he's never done before. He sounded anxious."

Emma's stomach tightened. "Did he say why?"

"No. Only that he needed to speak with you. Today, if possible."

"Did you give him my number?"

"I told him you'd call him back."

Emma stared out at the street, at the ordinary traffic and the delivery bikes squeezing between cars, and felt the day's calm start to slip.

"Thank you, Nathan."

"Of course, Mrs. Kingsley."

She hung up and looked at her father's contact for a long moment before deciding it could wait until she was somewhere quieter than a nonprofit kitchen. It was not, she suspected, a conversation that would improve with an audience.

Kingsley Manor was quieter than usual when she got home. She found Ethan in the library, a financial report open in front of him that he didn't appear to be reading.

"You survived work," he said.

"Barely. The storage room fought back."

"I expected as much."

She dropped into the chair across from him and let her shoes fall off her feet, one at a time, without any particular grace.

"Rachel says I've forgotten how to lift boxes."

"Have you?"

"A little."

He almost smiled at that, the kind of almost she was starting to recognize.

For a while neither of them said anything else. It was, she noted, becoming one of her favorite kinds of silence.

Her phone buzzed again on the arm of the chair. She glanced at it, then set it face-down without answering.

"Something wrong?" Ethan asked.

"My father wants to talk. Nathan says he sounded anxious."

"Do you know what about?"

"No." She looked at the phone as though it might explain itself if she waited long enough. "I'll call him tomorrow."

She told herself she'd call him tomorrow.

When tomorrow came, she looked at his name on the screen and put the phone back down.