“There’s more, isn’t there?”

She sounded like someone waiting for the next blow to fall. From her tone, I knew she more than halfway believed everything I’d told her was true. I had debated this, saved it until I was sure I needed it. But now I pulled the necklace out of my pocket and laid it on the table.

“Noelle keeps a stash of things Wendy throws away. She’s only six. It makes her feel closer to her mother.”

“She started doing that after Wendy left?”

“No, I found it under her sweaters when I first got to the town house.” I tried to find a way to continue. “She wanted to be close to her mother. This was the only way she knew.”

Mom didn’t protest or defend. She picked up the necklace. “You just want to show me that Wendy isn’t close to her daughters?”

“No. That’s just how I happened to find it. I didn’t think anything about it until today.”

“So what is it? It doesn’t look familiar. I don’t remember Wendy having anything like this.”

“In eighth grade Jeff Fishler gave Greta Harold a necklace with two parts.”

“Fishler, the golfer?”

I nodded. “They were boyfriend-girlfriend. Maybe you knew that. Anyway, this is called a mizpah necklace. When the two parts fit together, you can read a quote.” Now I knew exactly what it should say, because I had looked it up on my phone while parked in front of the house. I recited it. “‘The Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from another.’”

“I’m not sure what this has to do with anything.”

“The night she drowned, Greta was wearing her half of the necklace at the beach party. When they found her body, the necklace was gone. Jeff kept his half and wore it all through high school as a memorial.”

“Wendy had one, too?”

Of course that was a possibility. Maybe later in her life somebody had given Wendy a similar necklace, but I didn’t think so. If we ever wanted to know for sure, or if anyone in authority did, Jeff Fishler might have kept his out of sentiment, and a match might be made.

Now though, I told her what I believed. “I don’t think Wendy ever had one of these, Mom. Not until the night she grabbed Greta’s from her neck while she was drowning.”

She stared at me, but she didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I had no idea what she was feeling, either, or what she would say when she could speak again.

Could my mother ever believe that Wendy had done something so horrifying? That when she was barely fourteen, her perfect daughter had killed her own best friend, held her under the water in the dark as retaliation for attracting a boy Wendy had wanted? Or even the kinder version? That Wendy had allowed her friend to drown and still retained the presence of mind to snatch the necklace as she went under?