Chapter 7 - The Crumbling Foundation
The dining room descended into a suffocating silence. Marissa looked between the yellowed bank receipts and her mother's trembling hands. The denial in her eyes was waging a desperate, losing war against reality.
"Mom..." Marissa's voice was a high, fragile whimper. "Mom, you told me Daddy bought that diamond in Antwerp. You told me it was an investment piece."
"I did what I had to do to give you a good life!" Linda turned on her younger daughter, her voice turning venomous, cornered like a wild animal. "You think you'd be sitting at this table with the Vances if we looked like white trash from the south side of Chicago? You think Evan would have looked twice at you if you didn't have the poise, the clothes, the pedigree I fabricated for you?!"
"Pedigree?" Evan spoke for the first time.
He stood up slowly. He didn't look angry; he looked sickened. He pulled a small velvet box from his pocket and set it gently in the center of the table, right on top of Helen’s old cashier's checks.
"I didn't take the ring to the police, Marissa," Evan said quietly. "Beth was bluffing about the sheriff’s department."
Marissa lunged forward and snatched the velvet box, popping it open with trembling fingers.
The platinum band was there. The halo of small, glittering side stones was there.
The center prongs were empty. The two-carat European cut diamond was gone.
"Where is it?!" Marissa shrieked, dropping the empty box as if it had burned her palms. "Evan! What did you do to my diamond?!"
"It was never your diamond," Evan said, his voice flat and resolute. "At eight o'clock this morning, I met with a master jeweler in Skokie. He unmounted the stone. And then I drove to a small bungalow on Kenneth Avenue."
Linda gasped, clutching her chest. "You didn't."
"I did," Evan said, looking directly at Linda. "I handed Harold Hart's diamond back to Helen. I watched her hold it in her palm. And do you know what she did, Linda?"
Tears welled in Evan’s eyes.
"She didn't curse you. She didn't call you a thief. She just held it against her cheek, closed her eyes, and said, 'Harold worked so many nights for this.' She didn't even care about the eighty-six thousand dollars. She was just glad Harold's work hadn't been lost to the world."
Marissa sank into her chair, burying her face in her hands, her sobs filling the cavernous dining room.
"Evan, please," Marissa begged through her fingers. "Please, I didn't know! I swear to God I didn't know Mom lied! Don't punish me for what she did twenty-five years ago!"
Eleanor Vance stood up, smoothing her tailored wool trousers. She looked at Marissa with a cold, aristocratic pity.
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"Marissa, dear," Eleanor said softly, "whether you knew where the diamond came from twenty years ago is irrelevant. What matters is who you revealed yourself to be last night. You sat in a public restaurant, smirked at an eighty-one-year-old woman's handmade gift, and called her cheap to elevate yourself in our eyes."
Eleanor turned to her husband. "Richard, get the car. We are leaving."
