“It’s gone,” she said before they could speak a word. “The ring is gone.”
Chapter Four
Ruth was waitingup for them in the parlor. Flickering candlelight illuminated the sisters’ bleak faces, alerting their grandmother at once that something was amiss. Alarmed, she rose from her rocking chair as they filed stiffly past her.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“Someone stole the ring,” Evie said flatly. It was the first time she’d spoken since they’d left Boston, and her quiet fury rolled across the room like a wave. Slipping out of her shoes, she gave them an angry kick across the room. “It’s on a ship heading to London. We’ll never get it back.”
“I’m going to make us all some tea,” Claire murmured, flitting away to the kitchen.
“Joanna?” Ruth asked, turning to her eldest granddaughter with knitted brows.
Exhaustion seeped into Joanna’s bones like lead. Sinking down onto the sofa, she dragged a blanket over her lap and in dull, halting tones, told their grandmother everything that had happened, beginning with taking the ring to Mr. Bernard and ending with watching it sail away on theQueen Mary. When she’d finished, she could only shake her head in bewilderment. “I just don’t understand. Of all the people in Boston, why would a thief chooseme? How did he know I evenhadthe ring? And why take it toEngland, of all places? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I am going to bed,” Evie announced. “This was a horrific day, and I should like very much for it to end.”
“I’ll join you,” Claire said as she returned with the tea. Setting it on a table, she kissed Ruth on the cheek, glanced sadly at Joanna, and then followed Evie up the staircase.
Joanna dropped her head into her hands.
“They blame me,” she said, her voice muffled. “And they’re right. It’s my fault the ring was stolen. I should have protected it better. I should have had us go straight home. Then none of this would have happened.” Biting hard on the inside of her cheek to quell the tears that threatened to spill off her lashes, she lifted her chin and gazed helplessly at her grandmother. “What are we supposed to do?”
“First of all, you are going to stop blaming yourself. Because what happened isnotyour fault. It’s mine.” Ruth helped herself to a cup of tea before she sat back down in her rocking chair.
“What do you mean?” Joanna blinked in confusion. “Grandmother, you weren’t even there.”
A faint smile softened the stern brackets on either side of Ruth’s mouth as she turned her gaze to the painting of Joanna’s parents on the mantel. “Jacob was always handsome, even as a young boy. And he so did love your mother.” Her smile slowly faded as her gaze darkened. “There are things you are not aware of, Joanna. Family secrets I’ve kept from you and your sisters at the request of your father. Secrets that are tied to that damned ring.” She took a long sip of tea. “I selfishly thought that if the ring was sold then its troubled past would go with it. Clearly, I was mistaken.”
Uneasiness prickled along the nape of Joanna’s neck like tiny, little needles. In all her life, she’d never known her grandmother to hide anything. Ruth was honest to a fault, and blunt along with it. But clearly there wassomethingshe’d been hiding. Something that had begun unraveling the moment her grandmother suggested they sell the ring.
“What secrets?” she asked.
Ruth stared at the portrait for a long time. When she finally looked away, there was a glint of sadness in her eyes Joanna had never seen. “Painful ones. I am going to tell you the truth, my dearest, and leave it to you to decide if you wish to tell your sisters.”
Now, Joanna was more bewildered than ever. Yes, she and Evie could go at each other like cats and dogs, but when the dust settled, there was no one she trusted more. Except for Claire, of course. They were a bonded trio, their sisterhood forged by love and loss. There was nothing she would keep from her siblings, and nothing they would keep from her.
Surely, their grandmother knew that.
“Go on,” she said, even as part of her was tempted to plaster her hands over her ears and not listen to a word. She had no inkling as to what her grandmother was going to say, but she did know one thing: it wasn’t going to be good.
Secrets never were.
“I suppose I should start at the beginning.” Ruth paused. “But before I do that, I should like you to remember that you were truly the apple of your father’s eye. He adored you beyond measure, my dear. Nothing I say is going to change that.”
Joanna remained silent, dread and curiosity rising within her in equal measure.
“Your parents were childhood sweethearts. I honestly believe that from the first moment they met, they were in love. After your father graduated medical college in New York, their plan was to marry and settle here, in Somerville. He already had the house in town picked out, and your mother was all but decorating the nursery. But then…then things changed.”
“What things?” Joanna said warily as a rippling unease made its way down her spine. She knew her parents had fallen in love when they were very young. And she knew they’d married soon after her father became a doctor. Shortly thereafter, they had her, and then Evie, and then Claire. She’d heard the story a hundred times. Mayhap even a thousand. Yet in all its various retellings, there had never been a “but then”.
“While your father was in his last year of medical school, your mother traveled to London.”
Stunned, Joanna could only stare blankly at her grandmother. “She—she did?”
“Indeed.” Ruth clasped her hands together in the middle of her lap. Her fingers were clenched. Her knuckles white. “Her mother,yourother grandmother who passed right before you were born, was born and raised there.”
“Her name was…” Joanna hesitated as she searched her memory. “Mabel. Mabel…Ellin?”
