Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Kept the Books
I called Ruth three times before she answered.
"Where did you get that picture?"
My voice sounded unfamiliar.
Ruth hesitated.
"Emma, sweetheart—"
"Don't call me sweetheart. Tell me where you got it."
"I took it myself."
The room seemed to tilt.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed in the apartment Nathan and I had shared, surrounded by furniture we'd selected together.
His shirts still hung in the closet.
His expensive cologne sat beside my perfume in the bathroom.
Everything looked ordinary.
Nothing felt real.
"When?"
"July."
Three months earlier.
I stared at the photograph.
"You saw my father three months ago and you're only telling me now?"
"I needed to be sure."
"You knew what he looked like."
"People change after seventeen years."
"His left thumb has a scar from the time he cut himself repairing Mom's old brass press."
"I know."
My eyes burned.
"Then why?"
Ruth started crying.
I'd known her since childhood.
She had taught me how to balance a checkbook, how to recognize a genuine vintage clasp, and how to make the cinnamon cookies my mother loved.
I'd never heard her cry like that.
"Because he asked me not to tell you."
I closed my eyes.
A painful silence stretched between us.
"Did he say why?"
"He said there were things you didn't understand."
I laughed once, bitterly.
"Apparently."
Ruth asked me to meet her the following morning at the workshop.
I agreed.
Then I called Maya.
She listened without interrupting while I explained the photograph.
"That complicates things," she said.
"He's my father, Maya."
"I understand. But legally, his disappearance could affect old ownership records, estate documents, and claims Nathan might try to raise."
I hadn't even considered that.
"Are you saying finding him could hurt me?"
"I'm saying don't hand Nathan any information until we understand why he might want it."
At nine the next morning, I stepped through the doors of Vale Atelier for the first time in six weeks.
The familiar smell hit me immediately.
Metal polish.
Warm machinery.
Coffee that had been sitting too long.
My mother used to say the workshop smelled like effort.
There were seventeen people employed there, most of whom had worked for our family longer than I'd been married.
Denise Park, the head jeweler, looked up from her workbench.
Her expression softened when she saw my bruised face.
"Emma?"
"I'm all right."
She examined the swelling beneath my eye.
"No, you're not."
I tried to smile.
She didn't.
"Did Nathan do that?"
I nodded.
Denise set down her tools.
"That man hasn't been in this building for two months without making somebody miserable."
Ruth waited in my mother's former office.
She looked smaller than I remembered.
A paper folder rested on her lap.
"I should have called you in July," she said.
"Yes. You should have."
She accepted that without argument.
Then she opened the folder.
Inside were copies of old bank statements.
My mother's personal bank statements.
Several showed small recurring payments to a business called Bell & Birch Repairs in Vermont.
The payments had begun thirteen years earlier.
I looked at Ruth.
"Mom knew?"
Ruth lowered her eyes.
"She discovered he was alive four years after he disappeared."
I gripped the edge of the desk.
For thirteen years, my mother had known my father was alive.
For thirteen years, she'd allowed me to believe he was dead.
"Why would she do that?"
"She believed she was protecting you."
"From what?"
Ruth reached deeper into the folder and removed a handwritten letter.
It was dated only six months before my mother died.
May you like
The first sentence was written in her familiar careful handwriting.
If Emma ever asks why I kept Martin away, tell her about the missing stones.
