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I unzip the bag, suddenly recalling that I have something for Taylen. I dig into the side pocket of the large black and white polka dot duffel and produce a small red velvet pouch.
“Gahhhhh!” Taylen screams. He quite literally screams.
Jeffers raises his head and barks deeply. Instinctively, I lay one hand between his velvety ears to calm him.
I study Taylen, confused at his reaction. He’s turned ghostly white, and he’s staring at the red bag in my hand as if it might bite him. Wanting to reassure him that I haven’t smuggled a black widow or something in here, I shake out the brooch that is inside. It’s quite lovely—a big scarlet stone surrounded by pearls.
“Your granny gave this to me yesterday. She came to the house just to drop it off, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I couldn’t take it. She didn’t know the wedding was a sham.”
“I don’t know about that,” Taylen squeaks. He sounds like he just inhaled eighteen helium-filled balloons, all without puking.
I honestly have no idea why he’s acting like this. The brooch settles on my fingers, warm and heavy. It’s probably a hundred or so years old. It has a unique, enthralling beauty that old things just intrinsically seem to have because they belong to another era that we can’t really ever understand—a lost time. Somewhere no one can ever get back. I think that’s the appeal of old things. They connect us to our ancestors, and they’re so much more than a link to the past. Holding this is like holding a hundred years in my palm.
‘I want you to give it back to your granny. I obviously couldn’t wear it today as I didn’t want to risk losing it.
Taylen shrinks away from it like I really did just pull out a black widow and am trying to thrust the venomous spider at him. I hold the brooch out, my hand starting to hurt because it’s been hanging in the air for so long. When Taylen doesn’t take it, I grab it to put it back in its bag, but the pin pops open on the back and pricks my finger. Hard.
“Ouch!” I yelp. I leap off the bed, and Jeffers jumps to attention at my feet. I set the brooch on the bed and rush to the bathroom to run cold water over the puncture wound in my finger.
Even over the water running, I can hear Taylen talking to someone on the phone. “Shameless,” he says. “How could you give it to her?” I turn off the tap but stay in the bathroom and listen. If Tay didn’t want me to hear, he would take the call outside. I know he must be talking to his granny, and he must be referring to the brooch. “How did you know she wouldn’t have married that bore? Oh, too vibrant, is he? Oh, you knew she’d do something to ditch the wedding. Yes, I kidnapped her. No! You don’t get to say you were trying to help things along! We’ve been friends since we were kids. The love I feel for Ell is totally different!”
Confused, I wrap a tissue around my finger, which is hardly bleeding anymore. Taylen is stalking around the room like a pent-up wild animal. I’ve never seen him so…so…I wouldn’t call it angry. Distressed maybe?
All of a sudden, Taylen drops his phone and then stomps on it with the heel of his canvas shoe, which somehow does nothing to it. He lets out a roar, grabs the phone, storms outside, and hurls it into the parking lot. He has a good case on his phone, so it harmlessly bounces a couple of times and comes to rest face-side up. I stare at him, horrified.
“For the love of god,” he mutters. He rushes out, grabs the phone, and heads around back. I slam the door shut and follow him.
“What are you doing?” I call, but he’s well ahead of me. I watch, shocked, as he approaches the pool with the dubious green water and pitches the phone in there without a second thought. “Taylen!”
“It’s so we can’t be tracked,” he says tightly when he turns back around. “You dumped yours. I should have dumped mine. It wasn’t smart.”
“Uhhh, you could have just powered it off or taken out your SIM card.”
“This was the only way to be sure.”
I fist my hands on my hips. “Why are you so mad about the brooch? It’s just a brooch. So what if your granny gave it to me?” I don’t want to make it apparent that I was listening to his phone call, so I don’t ask him about the rest of what I heard. Why would his granny give me the brooch if she thought I wasn’t going to go through with marrying Henry? Did she seriously think that, or is she just saying it now that she knows what happened? If she knows, and she wasn’t at the wedding, then everyone must know.
