Except about ten years later when Georgia, now in college, came to visit my parents in Isham. As my dad told it, Georgia and my mom had become close friends over the years. Since my mom waited so long before having me, she became the “cool aunt,” taking Georgia out to bars when she was still underage, lending her clothes, giving her boy advice and makeup tips, even one time forging her sister’s signature on a parent slip during Fashion Week to take Georgia to a Christian Francis Roth runway show.

The whole relationship may have been, partially, a dig at her sister, who Georgia inevitably thought of as a total bore, a nagging mom intent on ruining any fun she was trying to have. But, my dad would always be quick to add, my mother genuinely did love Georgia and was devastated by what happened next.

My mom only noticed days later, after Georgia had left, while she was sifting through the jewelry in her safe. The bracelet was gone. But everything else was still there. Her diamonds, her Verdura cuffs, her emerald drops. And only two people knew the combination to that box: my father and Georgia, who would often borrow my mom’s less expensive pieces.

She called her sister in tears, screaming at her over the phone, accusing her of putting her daughter up to this, of using my mom’s generosity against her. Then the real fire started to be stoked, my mother questioning her sister’s parenting, repeating awful things that their mother had said to Octavia when they were kids. To his dying day, my dad wasn’t sure what Octavia said on the other end of the line, but after that fight, the damage was done. It didn’t matter that Octavia denied all of it, that Georgia claimed to have no idea where the bracelet had gone. They both disappeared from our lives, Georgia most likely forbidden from speaking to my mother ever again, her own hurt at the accusation tarnishing her view of my mother forever.

Then my mom got sick, and my father wrote a letter to Octavia and Georgia and never heard back. And they’ve been ghosts ever since.

And here’s that godforsaken cursed bracelet now, risen from the dead, ready to create a whole new era of drama in the lives of the women who inherit it, this golden bad-luck talisman.

22

December 1996—January 1997

Annie is off for a week around Christmas. She spends it huddled on the couch of a woman she knew from her associate’s degree program. Her former classmate is away and has asked Annie to house-sit, water her plants, feed the fish. Instead, Annie spoons lukewarm Chef Boyardee into her mouth, staring at the fuzzy light of the TV screen, bathed in darkness and her own stench.