Things We Do in the Dark(29)

“How many were married?” Drew asked.

“All of them.” She looked away. “My father, too.”

He had a thousand more questions. But he had to tread carefully. He didn’t want her to shut down.

“I asked her once if she loved Charles,” Joey said. “And she laughed. She said, ‘No, baby. I don’t love him. But I like him. And trust me, that’s better.’”

She pulled her pendant up to her lips again. When it was clear she wasn’t going to say anything more, he unpaused the movie.

A couple of months later, Drew asked her about the necklace. Joey said it was a birthday gift, and left it at that.

Now, as he finally opens her first diary to the first page, he understands immediately why she didn’t elaborate. As he loses himself in her words—she might have become a writer one day, had she lived—he realizes that his instinct about the necklace having an origin story was correct.

Some people wear their hearts on their sleeve. Joey wore her trauma around her neck.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


The night Joey was given the necklace, it was her twelfth birthday.

She sat at the small dining room table across from Charles and her mother, Joey and Ruby wearing matching red dresses with flared skirts. Joey was uncomfortable. She was too old to be dolled up like a mini version of Ruby, but the dresses had been a gift from Charles, and it would have been rude not to put hers on.

Charles had also paid for the pizza, the wine, the cake, and the unopened birthday gift that was sitting on the table in front of her. The small box was wrapped in thick silver paper and tied with a black velvet bow, and she knew that whatever was inside would be the nicest thing she would ever own. Joey looked at her mother, silently asking for permission.

Please let me have it. I don’t even know what’s in it, but I want it. Please, Mama.

Ruby took a drag on her Marlboro and exhaled a long stream of smoke from her red lips. “Go ahead, baby.” She sounded magnanimous, even though the gift wasn’t from her. “Open it.”

Joey had already opened her mother’s present, and it was a surprisingly thoughtful gift. When they were at the bookstore in the mall a month before, Joey had wandered around the stationery section, admiring the fancy pens, the scented papers, and the beautifully bound notebooks. The ones Ruby bought her for school were flimsy things with thin pages that ripped if your pencil was too sharp. These notebooks, in contrast, were luxurious, with gold spiral bindings. They came in a pack of six, and the covers all had different designs—butterflies, birds, rainbows, flowers, hearts, unicorns.

She knew better than to ask for them (do you think I’m made of money), but her mother must have gone back and bought them. Maybe Ruby had splurged to impress Charles, the current boyfriend, who was also her boss at the bank. Even if she had, who cared? Joey had squealed when she saw the notebooks, wrapping her mother in a tight hug. “Thank you, Mama,” she said, which pleased Ruby, because Charles was watching.

Trying not to seem too excited now, she reached for the silver-wrapped present and untied the bow. Careful not to tear the paper (she would save it, of course), she unwrapped a blue velvet box. Inside, nestled atop a small cushion of satin, was a thin gold chain with a diamond-and-ruby pendant. Her mother had one just like it, and now Charles had bought one for her, too. Eyes wide, she gently detached it from the backing.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, you won’t break it,” Charles said with a laugh. “It’s eighteen-karat gold. It’s strong.”

Joey held it up to catch the light, awed that something so pretty—and so expensive—was actually hers. A real ruby, surrounded by real diamonds, set in real gold.

“A lovely necklace for a lovely young lady.” Charles’s eyes were bright, his smile wide. “Come over here, sweetheart. I’ll put it on you.”

Another glance at her mother, but this time, Joey’s heart sank. Ruby was smiling, but it was not a nice smile. Ruby was smiling that smile, the one that hid what she was truly feeling. Charles hadn’t been around long enough to know that smile, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have noticed, because he wasn’t looking at Ruby. His attention was fully on Joey, and the one thing Ruby would not tolerate was anyone giving the attention that should be bestowed upon her to someone else. Including, and especially, her daughter.

Her mother’s eyes flashed with jealousy. It was quick—blink and you’ll miss it—but Joey caught it. The smoke from the Marlboro swirled around Ruby’s face. The tip of the cigarette now had a centimeter of ash, and if she didn’t tap it into the ashtray soon, it would fall into her lap. But her mother didn’t move, the icy smile plastered on her face like a clown mask.

Charles was oblivious to all the unspoken communication. “Come on, honey. Let’s see what it looks like.”

Joey was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. Slowly, she walked around the table to the other side where Charles was sitting. He moved her hair off her shoulder, the gray fuzz on his forearm brushing along her jawline as he clasped the chain around her neck. She was close enough to breathe in his cologne. It smelled expensive.

Charles turned her around and stared at her, gazing at her throat, and then the pendant, and then her chest. He reached out again, arranging her hair so it fell around her shoulders once more.