He stared at me, then let out a gust of air and pushed his fingers through his hair. “I don’t like it, either.”
I looked away. “I should call my Uber.”
“I should go talk to my grandpa. Try to calm him down.”
“Fine.” I took a deep breath. “Even though it’s not your job to manage your entire family.”
He frowned at me, and I lifted my face toward him. Though still mad, I didn’t want him to leave.
But he stepped back. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
I shrank a little and nodded. “Okay.”
I forced a smile and a stupid wave and went outside to call myride. I sat on the porch steps and turned my face up toward the moon, sucking in deep breaths of the heady summer medley. What was I doing? Forcing confrontations and getting into fights. Maybe the necklace really didn’t matter. Maybe I should be focused on what mademehappy.
But O’ma had wanted her necklace back so badly.
The door sounded behind me and I jumped up, hope unspooling in my chest. It drained away when I saw Helen stepping onto the porch. “Hi, Mrs. Barbanel.” I cleared my throat. “Um, thanks for having me.”
She said nothing.
Jeez. Had all the Barbanels taken a class in intimidation through silence? I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, because apparently I turned into a cartoon from the fifties when nervous. “My car should be here in eight minutes.”
In the fading light I couldn’t make out her expression. “You asked my husband about a necklace.”
Word traveled fast at Golden Doors. “I did, yeah.”
“It’s none of your business, but if you must know, he gave her that necklace.” Her words were clipped. “He gave her everything, and she gave him nothing.”
“What?” I blinked, trying to fit this new piece of information into the history of events. If Edward gave Ruth the necklace, why would she be demanding it back?
“He gave her the necklace, then took it back, and she was furious.”
“What—why did he take it back?”
“They broke up. It didn’t belong to her.”
Could you simply take gifts back when you broke up with someone? Maybe. I hadn’t even considered the idea of the necklace being a gift; I’d been so sure it belonged to O’ma. I’d thought it was a familyheirloom, perhaps, brought with her from Germany. If it wasn’t? If it was a necklace Edward had given her in the first place? Then maybe my digging into its history wasn’t as appropriate as I’d thought. Maybe I didn’t have a case at all.
Let it go.
I pictured the sparkling pendants dangling around O’ma’s neck in the photo. It had been a romantic, beautiful dream, a lost necklace, a grandmother’s legacy. In my head, my grandmother had always been the heroine of this story, but maybe Noah was right. Maybe there were other interpretations. What was Helen Barbanel’s story? A young woman whose fiancé ignored her but married her anyway.
How much had I even really known O’ma, as a person instead of as my grandmother? Why was I so convinced she’d been in the right—simply because we shared blood? Was blood enough of a reason to back someone?
“Why—do you know why they broke up?” I asked.
“She met some other boy.” Helen Barbanel looked me up and down. “Your grandfather, I suspect. He worked at a bagel shop.”
I felt like I’d been kicked. Of course. What a convoluted web. And what a simple reason. She decided to marry someone else, and had to give back a gift, and didn’t want to.
I looked up at the moon, feeling a little sick. “I’m sorry if this has all brought up a past you would have rather kept buried. I didn’t mean to be trouble.”
When she looked at me, her expression was unforgiving. “No one ever does.”
Nineteen
November 19, 1953
