The Boy Who Tried to Steal Her Bag Carried Her Sister's Necklace

CHAPTER 3 - THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS

The room was small enough to cross in six steps.

A mattress lay on the floor under a slanted ceiling. A kettle sat on a hot plate. Children's drawings were taped to the wall beside an old photograph of two girls at a seaside pier.

Eleanor knew the photo before she could think.

She was fourteen in it.

Clara was twelve.

On the mattress, propped against pillows, lay a woman so thin and gray with illness that for one terrible moment Eleanor thought she had come too late.

Then the woman opened her eyes.

Clara.

Older, hollow-cheeked, hair cut short and streaked with white where it should not have been. But Clara.

Eleanor made a sound she did not know was inside her. Half sob, half laugh. She fell to her knees beside the mattress.

Clara lifted trembling fingers toward the purple stone at Eleanor's throat.

"You kept yours."

Eleanor covered Clara's hand with both of hers. "They told us you were dead."

Clara shut her eyes. "I know."

Officer Moreau stood by the doorway, awkward now, hat in hand. Leo climbed onto the mattress and curled against his mother's side, careful not to hurt her.

For several minutes there was only crying. Not graceful crying. Not quiet. The kind that leaves a person emptied out.

When Eleanor could finally speak, she asked the question that had lived under every other one.

"Why didn't you come home?"

Clara looked at Leo, then at Moreau, then back at her sister. Shame moved across her face like a shadow.

"I tried once," she said. "Your husband answered the phone."

Eleanor blinked. "My husband? David?"

"He told me Father had a second stroke after hearing my name. He said if I came back, I'd kill him. He said you agreed it was better if I stayed gone."

Eleanor stared at her.

David had said nothing.

Not then. Not ever.

As if hearing the thought, Clara reached under her pillow and pulled out an old envelope softened by years of handling.

"I kept this because I couldn't understand it," she whispered. "It was your handwriting on the front. But the letter inside wasn't from you."

Eleanor opened it with shaking hands.

The note was brief.

Stay away. My family has suffered enough.

It was signed with her name.

But it was not her writing.

At the bottom, in a hand she recognized at once, someone had added a single line in blue ink:

I am trying to protect us all. Trust me. - David