“What are you implying, Chloe?” I had asked.

And Chloe had lowered her voice, and leaned across the candlelight, and told me that things had been going missing around the house.

A pair of diamond earrings.

Cash from her vanity drawer.

Expensive perfume.

“Are you accusing Marisol of stealing?” I had asked, and Chloe had said, smoothly, that she was accusing no one, only telling me to open my eyes.

“She’s also turning the girls against you,” she added.