Around her neck was a triple strand of small cream-colored pearls, fastened at the side by an oval silver clasp shaped like a folded oak leaf.

My hands stayed steady, but I clenched my jaw so hard a dull ache shot up into my temple.

Those pearls had belonged to Megan’s grandmother, carried over from County Cork in a tin trunk in 1948.

The week before she vanished, Megan had sat on the floor of our old bedroom for three hours, crying into her hands while she went through every drawer looking for that velvet box.

She told me somebody had come into the house while she was asleep and taken the heirloom right out of her top dresser drawer.