Marguerite Pell arrived at the house that same evening, summoned by her son the instant I left the kitchen — flanked, absurdly, by a lawyer, as though I were the one who’d done something requiring counsel.

She swept in furious, ready to defend her boy.

And as she drew breath to call me every name she’d rehearsed in the car, my eyes dropped to her throat.

Resting against her collarbone was a diamond pendant I recognized — because I had found the receipt for it months earlier, folded in Desmond’s briefcase, and had spent one bad afternoon assuming he’d bought a half-million-dollar necklace for a mistress.

He hadn’t.

He’d bought it for his mother.