Chapter 1 - The Battered Brown Purse
By the time the twelfth Christmas gift crossed the table, Evelyn Vale understood that nobody had forgotten her.
Forgetting was an accident.
This was deliberate.
A diamond tennis bracelet flashed beneath the chandelier as Celeste Vale squealed and held out her wrist. A silver watch went to Uncle Martin. A pair of Italian cuff links went to a cousin who had married into the family six months earlier. Even Frank Donnelly, the seventy-year-old groundskeeper, received an envelope thick enough to make his eyes water.
Twenty-three people crowded around the enormous walnut table inside the Vale estate outside Boston.
Twenty-two people received gifts.
Evelyn stood behind her chair with a crystal pitcher in her hand.
Her place setting had been removed before dinner.
Nobody had bothered explaining why.
“Evelyn.”
Her mother-in-law, Margaret Vale, extended an empty wineglass without looking at her.
“The cabernet.”
Evelyn walked around the table and poured.
She wore a dark green dress she had bought four years earlier and altered twice herself. Her blond hair was pinned neatly at the nape of her neck. A tiny scar crossed the side of her thumb where wrapping paper had sliced her earlier that afternoon.
Her husband noticed it.
Roman Vale noticed almost everything.
That was one reason people feared him.
At forty, Roman had the kind of presence that changed a room before he spoke. Six-foot-four, broad through the shoulders, his black suit concealed most of the tattoos curling over his chest and upper arms, but nothing softened the pale scar cutting through his left eyebrow.
Men who laughed loudly became quieter when he entered restaurants.
People who owed money suddenly remembered deadlines.
Yet tonight Roman sat at the head of his own family table and watched his wife move around it like hired help.
He had seen this ritual before.
Seven Christmases before.
Six.
Five.
Every year Evelyn smiled.
Every year Margaret distributed gifts “from the family.”
Every year Evelyn said she needed nothing.
Roman had accepted that explanation because acceptance was easier than curiosity.
That realization had not reached him yet.
It was coming.
“Roman.”
His cousin Gabriel lifted his new watch.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Too much?” Roman asked.
“Worth more than my first car.”
Laughter rolled around the table.
Margaret smiled.
“Loyalty deserves generosity.”
Roman looked toward Evelyn.
She had stopped pouring.
Only for half a second.
Then her expression returned to normal.
Roman filed the moment away.
Across the room, his grandmother Rose Vale sat near the fireplace in a high-backed chair pulled close to the table.
At eighty-three, Rose was the one person in the family nobody ordered around.
A stroke two years earlier had weakened her left side and stolen much of her speech, but it had not dulled her eyes.
Those eyes were watching Evelyn.
Rose lifted two trembling fingers.
Evelyn noticed immediately.
Roman did not.
Neither did Margaret.
The family had begun applauding as Gabriel opened another box.
Rose's hand suddenly clawed at her chest.
Her wineglass fell.
It struck the table and rolled, spilling red wine through the white centerpiece.
Evelyn dropped the pitcher.
“Rose?”
The room froze.
Rose's face had turned gray.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came.
Evelyn shoved two chairs aside and dropped to her knees beside her.
“Look at me.”
Rose gasped.
Evelyn pressed two fingers beneath her jaw.
“Roman!”
He was already standing.
“My purse. Front hall closet. Brown leather bag. Inside pocket. Small blue bottle.”
Roman moved.
Not walked.
Moved.
Chairs scraped behind him.
Someone shouted for an ambulance.
He crossed the marble foyer, tore open the closet door and found Evelyn's purse beneath three expensive winter coats.
It looked absurdly cheap sitting there.
Brown leather worn pale at the corners.
One handle had been sewn together by hand.
Roman grabbed it.
The zipper caught.
He swore, yanked harder, then plunged his hand inside.
Wallet.
Keys.
Lipstick.
A folded handkerchief.
Prescription bottle.
Then his fingers struck paper.
A lot of paper.
He pulled out a thick bundle held together with two rubber bands.
Receipts.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds, maybe.
He almost ignored them.
Then a name caught his eye.
Celeste.
He stopped.
The receipt on top came from a jeweler on Newbury Street.
Diamond tennis bracelet.
$7,850.
Paid in full.
Cash.
Three days earlier.
On the back, in Evelyn's handwriting, were four words.
Celeste. Christmas. From the family.
Roman stared.
His heartbeat changed.
Another receipt slipped loose.
Gabriel.
Watch.
$9,400.
Cash.
From the family.
Roman pulled a third.
Margaret.
Silk coat.
$5,600.
From the family.
Another.
Martin.
Cuff links.
Another.
Frank.
Holiday bonus.
Another.
Christmas dinner floral arrangement.
Another.
Rose's medication.
Another.
A receipt dated eleven months earlier.
Then twenty-three months.
Then three years.
Roman's fingers went cold.
The bundles were arranged by year.
Seven years of them.
Every Christmas.
Birthdays.
Anniversaries.
Graduations.
Hospital visits.
Flowers.
Baby gifts.
Funeral wreaths.
Every warm gesture the Vale family had congratulated itself for making seemed to exist inside his wife's battered purse.
“Roman!”
Evelyn's voice carried from the dining room.
He found the blue bottle.
But before he ran, one receipt at the bottom of the newest bundle stopped him.
Harrison Pawn and Estate.
One antique sapphire engagement ring.
Purchase price paid to customer.
$2,100.
Below it was a second receipt from an audiology clinic.
Rose Vale.
Advanced hearing devices.
$2,060.
Roman knew the sapphire ring.
He had seen Evelyn wear it once.
The night before their wedding.
Her mother's ring.
Roman stood alone in the marble foyer, holding proof that his wife had sold one of the last things her dead mother had left her.
For his grandmother.
Then he heard Evelyn shout his name again.
He ran.
Rose was barely conscious when Roman returned.
Evelyn administered the medication beneath her tongue, steadied her head and counted softly.
“Breathe with me. That's it. Come on, Rose. Stay angry at all of us for another year.”
Rose's good hand closed weakly around Evelyn's wrist.
“That's it.”
Color slowly returned to the old woman's lips.
The paramedics arrived eight minutes later.
By then Rose was breathing.
The room exhaled.
Margaret looked at the ruined tablecloth.
“Oh, for heaven's sake.”
Evelyn looked up.
Margaret pointed toward the wine spreading across the white fabric.
“That linen belonged to Roman's grandfather.”
Nobody spoke.
Evelyn swallowed.
“I'll clean it.”
Roman stared at his mother.
May you like
Then at Evelyn.
Then at the glittering bracelet on Celeste's wrist.......
