Chapter 6 - The Locket
The locket had a tiny dent near the clasp, from the day Emily dropped it on the kitchen tile. Lily knew every mark on it. She opened it with careful fingers and showed me the photo inside: Emily holding her as a baby, both of them laughing at something beyond the camera.
"Where did you find it?" I asked.
"On the pool deck. After Nora got me out. She put it in my hand so I wouldn't lose it."
Nora had kept the locket safe while I was accusing her of negligence. Shame rose in my throat.
I called her. She answered on the second ring but said nothing when I apologized. I could hear traffic behind her.
"I should have listened," I said. "I made a judgment before I knew anything."
"Yes, you did."
"I am sorry."
A long silence followed. "I accept the apology," she said at last. "But I need you to understand something. Lily wasn't just scared of the water. She was scared of who would find out she had gone outside."
"Why?"
"She asked me not to tell you someone had sent her to the pool. I told her I wouldn't force it out of her while she was shaking. Then you arrived and decided I was the danger."
I closed my eyes. "Did you see the woman in the blue scarf?"
"I saw someone leave through the garden gate just before Lily fell. I couldn't identify her face. But I saw the scarf, and I saw her carrying a flat envelope."
I looked at the locket in Lily's hand. It had not been lost. Someone had placed it where Lily would find it.
May you like
The question was why.
Nora said she had kept the locket in Lily's palm because the child kept asking if it was still real. "She needed something familiar," Nora told me. "She had just been pulled out of the water, and she was trying to remember where she was." I had been too busy judging to notice that kindness.
