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As Bruce parked the car at the side of the road, Elsa reached her family. Her gasps of, “What happened?” made her nearly faint.
Carmella flung forward, wrapping her arms around Elsa as she erupted with sobs.
“Who is it?” Elsa cried, terrified. “Who?”
But Carmella just shook her head, whispering, “It’s just the house. Someone robbed us.”
Elsa’s heart immediately hardened to rock. She leaned back, her jaw-dropping.
“What did you say?”
Nancy, Carmella, and Alyssa’s faces matched hers now. They were angry the way women get angry— with the urge to protect their pack, no matter the cost.
“What did they take?” Elsa demanded.
There was a dramatic pause. Nancy turned her eyes toward Carmella and Alyssa, begging for assistance.
“Um,” Alyssa began, adjusting Lucy in her arms. “I guess they took most everything.”
“Everything?” Elsa demanded.
Carmella’s eyes were bloodshot.
“I woke up around seven-thirty and went downstairs,” Nancy began. “Something seemed strange. All the closet doors were flung open. Two of the chairs were missing from the front room. I was a bit too tired to understand at first, so I went to wake up Alyssa.”
“All my jewelry,” Alyssa said, her nostrils flared. “Upward of six thousand dollars.”
Of course. Alyssa’s father had been richer than God.
“What else?” Elsa breathed, bracing herself.
“We don’t know of everything yet,” Nancy murmured. “I need your help to go through the house and mark everything that was missing. It’s for the police records.”
“I don’t have the memory you do,” Carmella told her simply.
Elsa’s heart felt stomped to smithereens. This was the house where her father had raised them; it was the house where their mother had brought them home, Carmella, Elsa, and Colton. The things they’d owned were heavy with nostalgia and worth thousands, but the memories were priceless.
Who could have done this?
One of the cops, Officer Bradley, approached to say they were ready for the initial walk-through. At that moment, Bruce appeared, flustered, with Zach in his arms. Elsa turned and lifted Zach from him, explaining with soft tones, “We were robbed. We have to walk through and assess the damage.”
Bruce, who understood how much Elsa’s father and Elsa’s father’s belongings meant to Elsa, nodded, his eyes rimmed red. “I’ll be here.”
Nancy and Elsa led the charge to the front door, which remained open to allow the soft summer breeze to course through the house. The first step into the foyer brought a sinister feeling, as though the air had shifted. Someone had walked into their home, taken their belongings, alienating them from the world they’d built.How many times had Elsa walked through that door, her heart lifting with gratefulness, just for being home?It felt as though these people had stolen that feeling of comfort from all of them. It seemed entirely cruel.
Elsa inhaled deeply and stepped through the front room, explaining that two antique chairs had been taken, along with three paintings that her father had collected from an art auction.
“The paintings were purchased in the sixties, I believe,” she began, “At which time, my father paid around five hundred dollars each. Not sure what that comes out to in today’s terms, but I can only imagine it’s a lot.”
Beside her, one of the cops scribbled this information onto a pad of paper. Behind him, another cop recorded her words, nodding along with what she said.
“I’m just worried I’ll miss something,” Elsa murmured, adjusting Zach against her.
“You can always amend this later,” the first cop explained.
“Okay.” Elsa’s voice wavered. “Let’s head into the dining room.”
She dreaded the dining room, knowing that her mother’s incredible collection of china wouldn’t be there anymore. When she reached it, not only was the china gone— but the armoire in which it had been stored was gone, as well. The armoire was beautiful, hand-carved from locally sourced wood and made in the early 1900s, right there on Martha’s Vineyard. As Elsa explained what was gone, a sob escaped her lips. Nancy grabbed her elbow in support.
