Chapter 10 - One Brooch Was Still Missing
Caleb stepped outside after seeing the photograph of the engraved watch.
He needed air.
I understood.
Diane remained inside.
For once, she had nothing to say.
The gold watch could potentially be recovered. The buyer had purchased it through a legitimate resale shop and knew nothing about the family history.
That would be handled later.
The sapphire brooch was different.
Nobody knew where it was.
And unlike the watch, Diane had not sold it.
Ethan had removed it.
Then someone removed it from his hiding place.
Diane insisted she had not.
For the first time that day, I believed her.
Not because her word had regained value.
Because her reaction when Ethan confessed was too immediate.
Real anger is difficult to fake perfectly.
Especially surprise.
Caleb came back inside.
“We search logically.”
He started with access.
Who had been in Ethan’s room during those three days?
Ethan.
Lily.
Me.
Caleb.
Diane.
No housekeepers that week.
No guests.
Only us.
Lily immediately said, “I didn’t.”
“I know,” I told her.
Diane scoffed.
“You cannot know that.”
“Yes, I can.”
“How?”
“Because when a four-year-old tells me something now, I’m going to start by believing she deserves to be heard.”
Diane’s eyes narrowed.
Ethan looked at me differently after that.
Maybe he understood I meant him too.
Caleb asked him to show us exactly where the case had been hidden.
Upstairs, inside his closet, on the top shelf, was the old board-game box.
When Caleb removed it earlier, he had noticed the banking envelope.
Now he noticed something else.
Dust.
A clean rectangular patch beneath the box.
And beside it, a faint blue fiber caught on the shelf edge.
The brooch case had been blue velvet.
Someone had taken it directly from the shelf.
Not accidentally.
“Grandma knew where I hide stuff,” Ethan said.
Diane snapped, “Every grandmother knows where children hide things.”
I looked at her.
Again—too fast.
Caleb did too.
“How did you know he hid things in this closet?”
Diane opened her mouth.
No answer.
Ethan’s face changed.
“She searched my room before.”
“When?” Caleb asked.
“Lots.”
“For what?”
He shrugged.
“Candy. Tablet. Stuff.”
Diane called it supervision.
I called it lack of boundaries.
But then Lily said something important.
“Grandma didn’t find the blue box.”
We turned toward her.
“How do you know?”
“Because Ethan moved it.”
Ethan frowned.
“I didn’t.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Lily shook her head stubbornly.
“You put it in the dinosaur.”
The dinosaur.
Ethan’s room had a large hollow plastic dinosaur toy box near the window.
His face changed.
Then he remembered.
“Oh.”
He had moved the brooch.
Not from the room.
From the board-game box to the hollow dinosaur because Diane had come upstairs while he was hiding it.
Everyone crossed to the toy.
Caleb opened the back storage panel.
Nothing.
Except a folded tissue.
Ethan reached in farther.
His fingers touched something taped under the inside edge.
A small plastic bag.
Inside was the sapphire brooch.
Diane actually gasped.
Ethan stared.
“I didn’t tape it.”
Neither had Lily.
Caleb removed the bag carefully.
Attached was a piece of masking tape with three words written in block letters:
KEEP THIS SAFE.
The handwriting was adult.
I looked at Caleb.
He shook his head.
Not his.
Not mine.
Diane stared.
Then Lily whispered:
“Grandpa wrote like that.”
The room went silent.
Diane’s late husband had been dead for two years.
The brooch had only been hidden this week.
So Grandpa had not taped it there.
But someone had deliberately copied a handwriting style Ethan associated with him.
And only one person in the house had spent years preserving his papers.
Diane.
She closed her eyes.
May you like
And for the first time, she began to cry.
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