THUGLIT Issue One - страница 18

“Wow. She lost no time helping herself to your mother’s things.”

“Don’t start, Erica. Please. This is stressful enough.”

I bit my tongue. The last thing I needed to do was fight with Jake right now. I noticed his verbal lapse-Mama-and that made me nervous. Old habits came back quickly, didn’t they? But I was also slightly annoyed with myself. Of course Kady took her mother’s jewelry. If I’d planned ahead, I would have gotten a pair of earrings like Mrs. Carlow had owned-baroque pearls on 14-karat gold stems-and set them in her jewelry box, then remarked on them while Jake was nearby. It was too late for that now. Better to stick with my original plan.

While Jake was going through the record collection, I slipped out of my dress. For a moment I debated leaving my bra and panties on and letting Jake remove them, but then I pulled them off, too. It was important not to have any margin for error. I went up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist from behind.

“This isn’t a good time, Erica. I can’t right now.”

“Oh, baby, you always can.”

We went back and forth like that for a while. I thought he might give in, but all of those owls watching had a negative effect on his libido. After a while I sighed and said I was going to the bathroom.

“You’ll keep an eye on my purse and stuff, right?” I called from the doorway.

Jake turned. It was important that he know I was completely naked. “Sure. But no one’s running off with it.”

I went to the bathroom and closed the door. Everything in the room was pink or had a floral print on it. There was even a pink owl sitting next to the sink… It made me feel a little self-conscious as I knelt down and opened the vanity. Inside were half-used bottles of shampoo, boxes of baking soda, and other junk I didn’t care about. Instead, I ran my fingers along the inside ledge just above the doors. When I hit something that felt like hardened putty, I pried it loose. There, encased in hardened gum, were the missing earrings, just as I’d left them. When I pried them free, I noticed that the pearls were looking a little gray. Of course, pearls needed contact with skin to keep their luster. These had been neglected for five years.

“You won’t believe what I found,” I told Jake when I came out. I put the earrings into his hand.

“Where did you get these?”

“They were in the bathroom.”

“They’ve been in the house all this time?” He frowned. “Where were they, exactly?”

“In the medicine cabinet.”

“Why were you in the medicine cabinet?”

“Why does that matter? I was looking for a Band-Aid, okay?” This wasn’t the reaction I’d expected at all. “The point is, your mother accused me of stealing her earrings, and they’ve been here all this time.”

“I don’t think these are the same ones. They look fake.”

“If they’re fake, it’s because they were always fake!” I was exasperated. “Those are the earrings.”

“How can you be sure?”

I stopped, realizing that that was a trick question. That time we’d visited, I’d denied even seeing the earrings. How could I claim I knew what they looked like. “I guess I just got excited when I saw them. Like maybe your mother realized she was wrong.” I started to get dressed. I’d wanted Jake to know that I hadn’t carried anything into the bathroom with me, but now that seemed pointless.

“I’ll give them to Kady. She’ll know them better than me.”

But Kady wasn’t any more convinced than her brother when she saw them. “These look like cheap-ass imitations. Not the real thing,” she said.

They did look like fakes, truth be told. But that wasn’t my fault.

“You think they’re Mama’s?” Jake asked.

“I’d bet they’re replacements put there by someone with a guilty conscience.” Kady looked at me. I fought the urge to kick her and turned to the window. Her husband, Ry, was outside, playing with their boys. This trip wasn’t going as I expected it to at all. I needed to do something to fix that fast, before it was too late.

“We need to talk,” Jake told me on the morning of his mother’s funeral.

“What is it, baby?”

“We’ve been out in Los Angeles for five years. I’m not happy there. I don’t like the work I’m doing. I trained as an otolaryngologist, and what am I doing? I’m making starlets look like Barbie.”