“It was just very dark that night,” I murmur. “That’s all I’m saying.”
Tim turns away from me. He looks down at the steering wheel, his eyes glassy. After a second, he puts the car back in drive. We travel the rest of the distance to my house in silence.
“I’m sorry,” he says as he pulls up in front of my house. “I shouldn’t have… look, I get why you might have mixed feelings about Shane, given…”
“Right,” I say before he can complete that thought.
“But you need to know that he is an evil human being. He’s sick. And if you ever see him at the prison, you need to turn around and run the other way.”
I lower my eyes. “I can take care of myself, Tim.”
He doesn’t have anything to say to that. I unbuckle my seatbelt, but he is still quiet. I don’t offer to let him come inside, and he doesn’t ask. I think this birthday has officially fallen out of the top ten.
When I get back into the house, it’s quiet except for the sound of water running in the kitchen. Margie is probably cleaning. She may be old, but she never sits still. Honestly, I wish I had her energy.
I walk into the kitchen in time to see Margie scrubbing at a pan and humming to herself. “Hi, Brooke!” she chirps. “Josh is asleep. Did you have a nice time?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” She sighs. “To tell you the truth, I miss dating. I love my Harvey, but I sort of miss that excitement. And Tim is so handsome.”
“Yeah…”
“He has great eyebrows,” she adds.
“Does he?”
“Oh yes. You can tell a lot about a man from his eyebrows. Nice eyebrows mean he’s wise.”
“Interesting…”
“Also,” she adds, “he has a nice butt.”
Oh my God. Although she’s right—Tim does have a nice butt, but I’m sort of embarrassed that Margie noticed. “Uh, thanks?”
“And that’s such a beautiful necklace he got you! But you should put it in your jewelry box, where it will be safe.”
My stomach drops. I had abandoned the necklace on the kitchen table and then forgotten all about it. Well, I didn’t forget about it so much as I hoped it would vanish into thin air while I was out with Tim. Or at least, he would know enough to throw it in the garbage bin, where it deserved to be.
But he didn’t. He left it there for me.
Margie grabs her coat and takes off for the night. It’s only after she’s gone that I dare to approach the blue rectangular box left behind on the kitchen table. It looks like either Tim or Margie put it back in the box, so all I need to do is toss it in the garbage.
But instead, I find myself opening the box.
I hold up the necklace, letting the snowflake charm swing back and forth. It looks exactly the same as the one I used to wear—the one Tim bought me for my tenth birthday. It’s a gold chain with a gold snowflake with white diamonds set into the six spokes of the snowflake.
I look closer at the necklace and notice something else that makes my heart stop.
The second spoke on the snowflake is missing a diamond from the edge. Exactly like the one I used to wear.
This necklace is identical to the one I wore in high school. And it has the exact same defect in the exact same place as that necklace did.
Is it possible that it’s the same necklace?
I never found out what became of that necklace. After it broke, I never saw it again. I had assumed the police kept it as evidence, but maybe they didn’t. Maybe somebody else had it this whole time.