Nothing valuable enough to immediately alarm me.
An old photograph.
A spare key.
A handwritten letter I’d kept from my mother.
Gregory had noticed because several items had later reappeared in strange places.
At first, he assumed one of us had simply moved them.
Then he caught the young woman inside our house.
“You caught her?”
He nodded.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I wanted to know why she was here before frightening you.”
My anger returned.
“So you secretly allowed a stranger into our home?”
“No.”
His voice became firmer.
“She already knew how to get inside.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
“How?”
“That is exactly what I couldn’t understand.”
“And Toby?”
“He saw her once. I told him she was helping me look for something because I didn’t want him frightened.”
Pieces were beginning to connect, but the picture they formed made no sense.
“The perfume?”
Gregory looked confused.
“What perfume?”
“You smell exactly like her.”
He lifted his sleeve and smelled it.
Then his expression changed again.
“She hugged me.”
I stared at him.
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Because she came to my office.”
The room went silent.
Gregory stood.
“She told me she was finally ready to explain everything.”
“And?”
“She disappeared before she did.”
I pointed toward the necklace box.
“Then start with this. Why does she have my necklace?”
Gregory hesitated.
That hesitation terrified me.
Finally, he walked toward the closet.
From the highest shelf, he removed an old cardboard box I had never seen before.
He placed it on the bed.
Inside were photographs.
Dozens of them.
I picked up the first.
Gregory was much younger.
Beside him stood a woman I didn’t recognize.
Then I picked up another.
The same woman.
Another photograph.
Another.
Finally, I found one showing the woman wearing a sapphire pendant remarkably similar to mine.
I looked at Gregory.
“What am I looking at?”
He sat beside me.
“The reason I had your anniversary necklace made wasn’t because I invented the design.”
My fingers tightened around the photograph.
“Then where did it come from?”
Gregory pointed toward the woman.
“It belonged to her.”
I stared at him.
“Who is she?”
He swallowed.
“My mother.”
I almost dropped the photograph.
Gregory had always told me his mother died when he was young.
Before I could speak, he pulled another picture from beneath the stack.
Two girls stood beside his mother.
One was clearly a child.
The other looked older.
And around the older girl’s neck was that same sapphire.
I looked from the photograph to Gregory.
Then suddenly remembered the young woman’s face at the bakery.
Her eyes.
Her jawline.
Something about her had seemed strangely familiar.
“Gregory…”
He nodded slowly.
“I don’t think that woman has been coming into our house because of me.”
“Then why?”
His eyes moved toward the open bedroom door.
“I think she’s been looking for you.”
Before I could ask what that meant, the doorbell rang downstairs.
Once.
Then again.
Toby shouted from the living room.
“Mommy!”
Gregory and I froze.
Then Toby called out something that made every hair on my arms rise.
“The bakery lady is here.”
Gregory looked at me.
Neither of us moved.
Then Toby added:
“She says she brought back the rest of your things.”
And suddenly I understood that whatever waited behind our front door had begun long before my marriage.
Long before Toby.
Maybe even long before I had ever met Gregory.
And the necklace around that stranger’s neck wasn’t proof of an affair.
It was the first clue to a secret someone had been hiding from me for years.
The full story continues in the first comment.
