“Camille?”
My head swung up, wrenching my eyes away from my purse—which now seemed to be moving slightly, like the alien beings inside were twitching and on the cusp of bursting out into the world with their simulant evil.
I set my features to “pleasant” and not “terrified and repulsed.” “Yes, Rashelle?”
“Our two o’clock is about to start.” The paralegal pointed at my monitor. “I noticed that you haven’t logged in and you weren’t responding to my messages.”
It was two o’clock? Where had the last hour gone? I’d been sitting here at my desk, frozen and staring.
“Great, thanks,” I told her, switching my expression over to “serious” and “focused.” After all, I was the lawyer with the most seniority here. Our boss, Beckett Forsman, had taken on a reduced role and had started working more from home due to his health, and he came in only once or twice a week. I was aware that many of the employees were looking to me for leadership. They were looking around in some confusion, too, because almost all of them were new. Beckett had also cleaned house in this department when he’d come on board, not long before I had. The people he’d hired were fresh on the scene but fortunately, they were also competent and diligent.
Including me, because I was serious. I was focused. I kicked my purse out of my direct line of sight before I joined the meeting.
The day ended late, as most of my days did. I had a big workload to begin with because Whitaker Enterprises was a giant real estate company, and with my boss’s illness and absence, there was even more to keep up with. I didn’t mind that, because it felt good that I was doing my part here and I thought that I’d been making a positive impression. This was my second real job after law school and it was important that I did well, because other people depended on it. I turned to my computer and checked to see if it was as humid in Kentucky as it had been today in Detroit…
I was avoiding it. I was avoiding my purse, I was avoiding the elevator, I was avoiding the parking garage, and I was avoiding everything outside of this office building. Instead of leaping up to deal, I was sitting behind my desk and checking on the dew point, deleting old emails, and scrolling three and four months ahead in my calendar. I’d found a dentist appointment that I’d forgotten about and I saw that my dad’s birthday was on a Sunday this year…
Ok, that was enough. Time to go, time to stop avoiding my life. I picked up my purse, which I now hated so much that I didn’t put it over my shoulder. Instead, I let it dangle from my fingertips. I’d learned a lot about being a city resident since I’d moved here, and this was definitely not how you were supposed to carry valuables. But I couldn’t stand the thought of clutching that bogus jewelry right up against my body.
The apartment was empty when I got home, but I had expected that. When I’d left this morning, I’d gone through my usual routine: I’d set out the loaf of bread next to the toaster, put a plate and a knife and a jar of honey beside that, turned on the coffee machine, emptied the dishwasher, straightened the slippery pillows on the couch, and then left a note on the refrigerator under a magnet.
It was still there and I read the words in my own handwriting. “Good morning, Dax!” I’d written. “Please take out the trash on your way down to the car. Have a great day, love you. C.” I’d drawn a little picture of him sleeping in the bed that I’d just eased my way out of, as silent as I could be in order not to wake him.
The plate was still on the counter, except now it had toast crumbs and drops of sticky honey surrounding it. There were a few ants, too. The coffee machine was still turned on and I knew from the smell that the trash was still under the sink, probably full of more ants. The bed was unmade but he was no longer in it. As my day in the legal department of the real estate firm ended, Dax’s job began since he worked nights. He was a club promoter and he was out all the time at various places in the city. I didn’t know exactly where since he usually didn’t let me know his plans, and I shared my location with him but it wasn’t reciprocal. He didn’t like eyes on him, he’d explained. Plus, now he was driving the good car (out of the two that we had), so there was a lot less chance that he’d have trouble on the road and get stranded somewhere. I didn’t need to know.
I did keep track of him, though. I opened his social media now and there it was, a post about the party he was throwing downtown at the Château Moderne, about the DJ and the drinks and the low cover, tonight only. I got changed, picking the shoes and dress that Dax himself had chosen when we’d first moved here and he had wanted me to meet some of his new Detroit friends. The heels were much higher than what I was used to and the dress was much shorter, but he’d said that I was good. At the club, I’d overheard one of his friends telling him that it was nice to go home to that, and he’d been pointing at my butt.
At the time, I hadn’t been very happy because I considered that there was more to me that my fiancé should have been happy to come home to, qualities besides how I looked in this dress. I hadn’t said anything, though, because it was really important for Dax’s career that he didn’t offend anyone. He was supposed to be everyone’s buddy, the guy whose name meant fun. I also hadn’t said anything later when that same friend had put his hand on my butt. I had moved it away and shaken my head, but when I’d told Dax, he’d said that it didn’t mean anything.
“In that outfit, what do you expect?” he’d asked me reasonably. “You did good tonight.”
I had been glad that I’d helped him, because he was in a hard business. He had wanted to move to Detroit to join forces with his cousin, who was already working here as a promoter. But almost as soon as we’d arrived, his cousin had gotten arrested for possession with intent. I wasn’t a criminal attorney and I’d helped him out as much as I’d been able, but with that as his fifth or sixth strike, he was looking at time no matter whatanyone did. It had meant that Dax was on his own, starting from scratch, but we’d had my salary to depend on. That had been lucky.
I flipped my hair over my shoulder and smoothed it down. Dax always liked it long, but for work, I tended to wear it up. The way I had it now, with the dark waves loose, made me seem too young and not serious enough for a venerable firm like Whitaker Enterprises. It was perfect for tonight. I pulled up my breasts in my bra and put on more eyeliner, and I tried to tone down the flushed color in my face. Then I reached for my purse and extracted the jewelry, which I hadn’t seen since I’d left the shop this morning. The stones still sparkled, which was because I cleaned them so carefully and so often, and I’d never noticed a problem—not until recently. I’d never had a diamond before Dax had given this stuff to me, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to.
It still looked fine and suddenly, hope flared in my heart. What if that jeweler had been wrong? What if her testing meter hadn’t been properly calibrated? Maybe she hadn’t known what she was looking for through that loupe she’d held over her eye. Maybe this was all a big mistake.
I swallowed and slowly slid the ring back onto my finger. I had been the one to put it there when Dax had bought it for me, too, and it was still a little big but he hadn’t wanted me to bring it into a jewelry store to be sized properly.
“Do you know what happens when you do that? Motherfuckers rob you blind,” he’d told me, shaking his head at my naïveté.“They pry out the stones and swap them with glass or some shit. Don’t take that off your finger, Camille.”
It hadn’t made a lot of sense to me, since people had rings resized and repaired all the time, but Dax knew more about the situation because he and his friends wore a lot of jewelry. They had to appear as if they were important, wealthy guys, of course, in order to achieve actual success.
Wait a minute! This line of thinking about stolen gems produced an even stronger flare of hope, because it was possible that someone had stolen my diamonds! Once, at the gym in my office building, the ring had flung off my finger when I’d been running on the treadmill (since it was still a little too large). It had been at least fifteen minutes before we’d been able to find it, fifteen minutes which I’d spent crawling on the rubber floor and trying not to cry. What if, during that window of time, someone had been able to pry out and replace the stones?
Yes, that could be it! I didn’t care that this theory didn’t make a lot of sense, since the thief would have needed to be prepared with replicas and since it also didn’t explain the diamond simulants in my earrings or the issues with the “gold and ruby” bracelet, either. I was nodding as I went to my car. There had to be an explanation, and I would go talk to Dax and we could figure it out together. I flipped down the visor and looked at myself for a moment in the mirror. I still saw the flush on my cheekbones that wasn’t due to blush or bronzer, and I saw how my dark eyes looked huge and worried. I had already bitten off all the lip stain that I’d applied.
Whatever, because my hair looked good and Dax’s friend had liked my butt in this dress. I put on more stain and my hands shook, but I was ready.
We lived on the East Side of Detroit, a city split down the middle by Woodward Avenue and then divided up into pie slices by other big streets like Grand River, Gratiot, and Jefferson. Before I’d moved here, I’d studied how the urban plan had taken shape back in the eighteen hundreds and I’d tried to memorize the names of the roads, too. The town where I’d grown up had only two stoplights, and none of the other places I’d lived since had been this large. I was learning my way, though, and I drove downtown and parked near the Château Moderne nightclub. There wasn’t much of a line to get in and it was all guys, so when the doorman saw me, he waved me forward.
The lack of line made sense, because there wasn’t much of a crowd inside, either. The DJ had the music pumping but only a few people danced and the bar wasn’t busy. I scanned the dark room for Dax but I didn’t see him at first. Most likely, he was in the VIP section, where he liked to hang out when he worked. In this club, it was an L-shaped platform with a velvet rope stretched in front of it.The tables and benches in the part that I could see were empty and a big guy, the VIP security, stood guarding them. He looked bored and he yawned, and I watched him reach into his pocket to check his phone. No one was fighting to get past him tonight.
Except for me. “Hi, I know the promoter,” I said, and I tried to step around him.
He mirrored my movement and blocked me. “Are you on the list?”
“No, but I’m Dax Miststuck’s fiancée. I really am,” I promised, nodding hard. I held up my hand to show off the ring that I had returned to my finger. It sparkled a lot even in this low light, and that was because there were just so many stones. The setting was a mound of what I’d thought were diamonds—they really could have been diamonds, if the jeweler today had made a mistake. This ring was so large and so heavy that I’d been shocked when I’d first flipped open the box and seen it.
