Chapter 1
“I put that necklace in my wife’s coffin with my own hands.”
Serilda’s lips parted.
No answer came.
Avelise stopped wiping the crooked streak of lipstick from her mouth. Her eyes dropped toward the sapphires hanging over her apron as if the stones had suddenly become something alive.
I stepped closer.
“Take it off.”
Avelise reached for the clasp.
Her fingers shook too badly.
I did it for her.
Slowly.
The necklace settled into my palm.
Cold.
Heavy.
Familiar.
Nine years earlier, I had fastened that exact clasp around Lenora’s neck before her coffin closed.
There was a tiny imperfection near the third sapphire.
A scratch she made against a marble counter during our honeymoon in Charleston.
I touched it.
Still there.
Original.
Not replica.
Not misunderstanding.
I looked at Serilda.
“How did you get this?”
She glanced toward the portrait.
Wrong direction.
“Answer me.”
Her fingers tightened around the lipstick.
“I found it.”
“No.”
My voice stayed low.
“You found something I buried six feet below stone?”
Avelise swallowed.
“She didn’t find it.”
Serilda snapped:
“Be quiet.”
I turned my head slightly.
Serilda stopped speaking.
Then I looked at Avelise.
“Continue.”
She gripped the clean handkerchief.
“Someone brought Miss Serilda a small black case yesterday.”
“Who?”
Avelise hesitated.
That told me she knew the name.
“Who?”
“Mrs. Vale.”
Everything inside me went still.
Evangeline Vale.
Lenora’s older sister.
The woman who had stood beside me at the funeral.
The woman who had watched me place this necklace inside the coffin.
Serilda’s face changed.
There.
Truth.
I stared at her.
“Evangeline gave you my wife’s necklace?”
Serilda whispered:
“She said you’d finally look at me if I made you see how ridiculous this house has become.”
Interesting.
Not an answer.
A confession of influence.
I turned toward Avelise.
“Why you?”
Her expression collapsed.
“Mrs. Vale said I had the same mouth.”
My jaw tightened.
Same mouth.
The lipstick.
The necklace.
The portrait.
Not random humiliation.
Someone had designed this.
I looked at Serilda.
“You didn’t just dress a maid in my wife’s things.”
I glanced toward the portrait.
“You staged her.”
Serilda began crying.
“I wanted one night where she wasn’t the most important woman in the room.”
Then Avelise whispered:
“Sir…”
I looked at her.
“Mrs. Vale said something else yesterday.”
“What?”
Avelise’s eyes lifted toward the portrait.
“She said if Miss Serilda couldn’t survive looking like Mrs. Lenora…”
A pause.
“…then she didn’t deserve to replace her.”
The room became completely silent.
May you like
This had never started with Serilda.
It had started with the woman who had appointed herself guardian of my dead wife’s memory.
