Lily looked down. "My mama gave it to me." Everett moved closer, suddenly alert. "It's all right, sweetheart."
Marin set the mug down badly. It clattered against the counter, but did not break. She crouched in front of Lily, careful not to touch the chain. Tears filled her eyes so fast they seemed pulled from somewhere older than the night before. "May I see it?"
Lily glanced at Everett. He nodded once, though unease had begun to crawl up his spine. Lily lifted the pendant. It was a crescent moon wrapped around a tiny engraved star, heavy silver darkened at the edges with age.
On the back were three letters Everett had never been able to explain: S. V. L. Marin covered her mouth. For several seconds, she could not speak. When she finally did, the words came out broken. "My brother wore that under his dress shirt at every family dinner from the time he was sixteen. Sterling Vale Langford."
"He hated the Langford, so he used to tell people the L stood for lucky." Everett felt the room tilt. "That's not possible." "We buried him with it." "Maybe there was another one."
"There wasn't." Marin stood slowly, her face turning from grief to something colder and more dangerous. "My brother was killed four years ago by a hit-and-run driver after leaving a foundation meeting. The police said the car was stolen, then destroyed. Witnesses changed statements."
"The investigation collapsed. Corbin was my fiancé then. He handled everything when I couldn't stand up straight. He stood beside me at the funeral. He watched them close the casket."
Everett backed toward a chair and sat because his legs had begun to lose their purpose. Norah had given that pendant to Lily with shaking hands. Norah had kissed Lily's hair so many times the child had squirmed, then left a note on the kitchen table saying she was sorry, saying she could not live inside the fear anymore, saying Everett and Lily were better off without her. He had believed her because pain often accepts the cruelest answer first.
Marin's eyes locked onto his. "Your wife—what was her name?" "Norah?" His voice sounded unfamiliar. "Norah Bennett Cole."
"What did she do?" "Legal records clerk. Contract work mostly. She temped at Sable and King for six months before she vanished."
Marin gripped the edge of the counter. "Sable and King handled confidential settlements for Vale Meridian executives." Everett looked at his sleeping daughter's inhaler on the counter, at the stack of hospital bills held together with a binder clip, at the pendant that had been touching Lily's chest for 3 years like a secret heartbeat. "Norah came home one night scared out of her mind," he said. "Wouldn't tell me why."
"Said she had opened the wrong archive box. Said there were names on papers that should never be together. I thought she was having a breakdown. I was working nights then. Lily had just been discharged again."