“What did she say about the necklace?”
I glanced over at Amy and saw more hope in her face than I could wrap my head around. I couldn't saddle her with this. I'd figure it out. Somehow. “She's looking for it. She told me to call her next week.”
“But we'll be gone by then.”
“I know. She said she would mail it to us. Made a big deal about me paying for the postage.” I hoped that somewhere God would be okay with me lying like this. I was just protecting her.
“I hope she can find it.”
I wrapped my arm around Amy and pulled her closer. “Don't worry. She will. I talked to her nurse. Beverly. She seemed nice. And reasonable. I can always talk to her if we need help.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I’ll get it. I promise.”Even if I have to put on a catsuit and sneak into a nursing home in the middle of the night and nab it.
“Thanks.” Amy dropped her head and started picking at her nails. “So, something sort of terrible happened at the grocery store.”
“Did Dad do that thing where he argues with the butcher? It's so embarrassing.”
Amy laughed quietly. “No. Not that. I, uh…” She looked over at me, her blue eyes wide. “I thought I saw him, Katherine. Gordon. And he looked at me. I don't think it was him, but damn, it really looked like him.”
My heart wound up into a tiny ball. I slapped my hand against my chest to see if it was still beating. “You're sure it wasn't him? What did he look like? Did he say anything to you?”
“I can't really explain what he looked like. I only know that I don't think it was him. Didn't he say something once about a brother who lived here? Maybe that’s who it was. Honestly, I'm glad it wasn't him. I don't know what I would've said or done. I probably would've punched him in the face.”
“I forgot about the brother, but I think you're right. I'm pretty sure Gordon moved away. The last time we saw him was in high school. Remember? The football game?”
Amy nodded. “How could I forget?”
She'd been a freshman and I was a junior, the first home game of Amy's high school life. As much as my few friends and I had been outcasts, we still went to the football games. It was fun to sit in the stands in the crisp fall air, drinking soda and making fun of our classmates under our breath. We always sat in the same seats, off to the side and about ten rows up. A few minutes into the first quarter, we spotted Gordon marching up the concrete stadium steps. He looked at us as we walked by, both Amy and I in shock. He sat six or seven rows behind us. It made Amy and me deeply uncomfortable and nervous. We left at halftime and treated our friends to sundaes at McDonald's as a bribe for taking off early. We had to get out of there. We were too freaked out.
“Even if it wasn't him, I'm sorry you had to go through that. It must've been awful.”
Amy shuddered. “Ugh. The thought of him is so creepy. I hope I never see him for real.”
I might have been pretty traumatized by my phone conversation with Grandma Price, but at least I hadn't had to go through the shock of thinking I'd seen Gordon. “Me neither.”
“I’m glad Luke was there. I told him who the guy looked like. He was a little fascinated, but the whole cheating thing is a mystery to him. His family is so…what's the word?”
“Committed?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“So you told Luke? About everything?”
“Well, yeah. As soon as I knew we were coming for Thanksgiving, I sort of had to. I just didn't want it to be weird.”
“What did he say?”
“What everyone says. That he was so sorry and that it must have been so hard for us. It was sweet, but you know what it's like. You just sort of want the conversation to end.”
I never talked about it to anyone, not since high school, but I knew exactly what she was saying. That pitiful look on people's faces—it only made you wish that much harder that the bad stuff had never happened.
“You told Eamon, right?”
Slow as molasses, I shook my head. “Nope.”
She sighed. “I say just get it over with. You'll feel so much better.”
