Here She Lies

platinum. Color grade F, with an excellent clarity grade.”
    Why was she describing this one differently? “That one’s set in silver and this one’s platinum?” I asked. “Isn’t that a more valuable metal?”
    “Oh, yes, much more valuable.” She picked up the first earring and paired it with the second in the deepest crevice of her palm. “Do you see the difference?”
    As Bobby leaned closer his face seemed to awaken with recognition. He touched the second earring with the tip of his forefinger. “This one’s a real diamond.”
    “That’s right. It’s a real Tiffany Peretti, valuedat...” Mrs. Simonoff pressed down both sides of her mouth in a thoughtful expression typical of the French, and I knew she had spent a lifetime with her French husband, Gaston, absorbing his mannerisms, just as I knew that at this very moment all my certainties were in reversal and life as I’d known it was over. “I’d say, about ten thousand dollars for a pair.”
    Bobby straightened to full height. “We paid eight thousand.”
    “We?” My voice was loud, unreal.
    “My dear” — Mrs. Simonoff addressed me soothingly, but her attempt to calm me failed; my insides felt like an earthquake had hit — “you got an excellent price. It’s a stunning piece. But why did you pair it with a zircon?”
    I couldn’t help myself: I was sick. I ran out of the store and made it across the sidewalk to a public trash can on the corner, where I threw up. Rain was pouring now and I was soaking wet, which was just as well. It covered the stench and the mess and ensured that no one was around to see me. No one except Bobby. It was a minute before he got to me — Bobby being Bobby, he wouldn’t have left the store without first paying Mrs. Simonoff and attempting some kind of polite explanation — but finally he arrived at my side in the rain, holding a tiny envelope that must have contained the earrings. My ponytail had come loose, so he pried the wet hair off my face to free me as I heaved over the large metal can. Mrs. Simonoff, meanwhile, emerged under an umbrella, offered a handful of paper towels and then retreated to her store. I cleaned my face and my shirt and threw the soiled paper squaresinto the garbage. Then Bobby and I walked through the pouring rain to my sister’s car.
    “You’re right,” I said.
    “I wish I wasn’t.”
    “But you are.”
    “I’m really sorry, Annie.” He opened the passenger door to let me in, then hurried around to the driver’s side, but before starting the motor, he turned to face me. “Now what?”
    “You’re asking me ?” Buckled forward in the seat, I wept into my hands.
    My brain felt like an out-of-sync lightning storm, revelations flashing at once. If Julie had bought those diamond earrings it meant she had bought all that other stuff; it meant she had somehow engineered my arrest. When I was out of town. When she had Lexy. It meant she had planned this for a long time; that she probably had tried to seduce my husband when I was pregnant and vulnerable; that she had organized the demise of my marriage. That she had lured me to her; weaned my baby with my help; prepared for today. And if I hadn’t inadvertently mixed our earrings the appraisal would have been for a pair of zircons; we would have relaxed a bit, gone home and waited for noon — giving her more time to run away.
    Bobby rubbed his hand across my shoulders, warming me. His tone was gentle. “I think we should drive straight to the police station.”
    “No, let’s go home first. Maybe they’re back.”
    “Annie.”
    He was right; they probably weren’t at the house. No: they weren’t. But even knowing what I now knew,beginning to understand it and recognizing the truth of what Bobby had first suggested at Twelfth Night, I still harbored a little seed of hope. Just a tiny one, which I would keep to myself.
    “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go see Detective Lazare.”

Chapter 9
    Gabe Lazare leaned back in his swivel chair and listened. His desk was angled into a corner of the lowceilinged, white-painted Detectives Unit of the Great Barrington Police Department. Bobby and I sat opposite him, soaking wet from the rain, and took turns talking. I could hear but not see the half dozen other detectives at their desks behind us: the clatter of typing on a computer keyboard, chair wheels rolling across linoleum, a phone ringing just once before being answered, the hum of unruffled voices. Under the fluorescent