Gabriella is due back at eight, and I don’t feel like schmoozing, putting on a smile for a woman I just recently warmed up to. Instead, I hustle out at 7:30 p.m., claiming to have drink plans with a friend from college. It is only then that Anneliese gives me a quizzical look, an arched eyebrow, because, I realize, I haven’t spent time with any friends since the beginning of the summer.

Outside, the rain has made the city oppressively humid, the heat hanging like a cloud even as the sun sets. Sweat stains my armpits as I stand on the subway, the lack of AC combined with the mess of people combined with this new discovery making me woozy, my knees almost buckling before I get to my stop.

When I’m home I lock my door, as if to ward off anyone looking in, anyone who might see that bracelet and confirm its reality to me. When I finally fish it out of my pocket, it’s warm to the touch and I feel feverish all over again, laying it gently on my bedside table before sitting down.

This bracelet has become a legend so deeply ingrained in my upbringing, in my family lore, that to me the story of what happened with it had assumed almost mythical dimensions. It was what tore my mother apart from her sister, what left me estranged completely from her side of the family, even after her death, even after my dad tried to make amends, lamenting the fact that he had no siblings. That our Thanksgivings were spent with his parents until they died and then just the two of us, eating Chinese takeout, declining friends’ invitations, and watching bad Stephen King adaptations.

And here it sits, completely intact, looking no worse for wear than if it had been around my mother’s wrist yesterday, winking at me in the dim light, a physical manifestation of gaslighting, a mute object trying to convince me that what I’d heard all my life was a crazy, twisted fabrication.

The bracelet had been my grandmother’s, presented to her by my grandfather when they were dating, shortly before he proposed. She wore it everywhere, the heart charm engraved with her name, Greta, permanently indenting the skin of her wrist, its edges digging deep whenever her hand lay flat on a surface for a prolonged period of time. She is wearing it in the photograph, the one I offered my secrets to.

Then she had a daughter, my aunt, Octavia, and another charm was added, designed by the same Sicilian émigré jeweler as the first. And of course, ten years later she had my mother and an additional charm was created, the two smaller charms bracketing the large one.