Page 55 of More With You

It's your mom’s necklace? My stomach clenches, squeezing all the bile and acid up my throat, until I’m half-certain I’m going to be sick.

“Ben left this for you?” Mae interrupts my nausea.

I nod, fanning myself with an abandoned cloth napkin, stained with the partial crescents of Mrs. DuCate’s lipstick. “It was… on my… porch,” I wheeze, fighting through the waves of queasiness. “With this.” I touch the offending pendant.

Mae stifles a horrified gasp. “Give it to me, quick!”

She flaps a hand at me, but I shake my head. “Mrs. DuCate has seen it. Didn’t you just hear her?”

“Ben wouldn’t do that,” Mae says firmly: her eyes fixed on the necklace. “I daresay he didn’t write this, either. Why would he set you up like this? He’s got no reason to, when I’m supposed to be on babysitting duty after dinner.”

I glance at her. “Huh?”

“Every night, when Ben goes to your place, I sleep in the room adjoining Grace’s, in case she wakes in the night,” Mae explains, in a hushed tone. “He came to remind me, after he got back with Grace, that he was going to see you again tonight. It’s a little ritual we’ve been having. Why would he do that if he knew you were coming here?”

I shrug. “Maybe, he thought I might chicken out?”

“But… he wouldn’t do this to you, and he sure as heck wouldn’t give you Mrs. DuCate’s cotillion necklace. Even Mrs. DuCate doesn’t wear it. It’s vintage Cartier, and worth… I wouldn’t like to say. It could be priceless.” Mae gestures toward the double doors, where the screaming has turned unintelligible. There are deeper grumbles, presumably from Ben and Ben Senior, but I can’t make out any of the words. All I know is, Mrs. DuCate’s angry pitch could shatter every chandelier they’ve got in this house.

“It’s his handwriting, though,” I insist, though I don’t actually believe Ben is capable of something like this. He has no reason to trick me, and I saw the look on his face when I came into the dining room. He was just as shocked to see me as I was to see everyone in casual clothes.

Oh my God… Mae’s words properly sink in. I just waltzed in wearing his mom’s vintage, possibly priceless Cartier necklace… As first introductions go, this is a complete multi-car pileup.

Mae squints harder at the letter. “Similar writing, for sure, but not quite the same. A good forgery.”

“What?” I take back the letter and look it over with a more discerning eye. The trouble is, I’ve only seen Ben’s handwriting twice, so if there are differences, I can’t see them. It looks the same as the first letter he wrote to me. At least, I think it does. I curse inwardly. Why didn’t I check it against his first letter? Ah, that’s right, because I wasn’t expecting to be deceived!

Mae points to some of the letters. “There are little loops here, but they’re rounded, not spiky. Ben’s loops are always spiky because he writes fast. I can’t deny it’s a good copy, but it’s not his writing.” With her fingertips, she underlines the word “Ben” at the bottom. “And Ben always strikes a line under his name. There’s no line here.”

“If it wasn’t Ben, then—” I don’t need to fill in the blank. I already know. It starts with an “L” and ends with an “I.” I just wonder if he did this on his own or if he got Cybil to join in on the game.

Mae frowns. “You got a clue, there?”

“I think so.”

No, I know so. Who else would stoop scraping the dregs from the desperation barrel and have access to Mrs. DuCate’s jewelry? I don’t know if she’s got a vault or she’s so nonchalant about her extreme wealth that she just keeps it in a box on her vanity or she just handed it over to him. Either way, Levi is the DuCate’s self-proclaimed pet, but how far do his privileges here stretch?

“Has Levi Montrose been to the house recently?” My throat clogs with a suffocating blend of bitterness, outright rage, and the tiniest bit of twisted amazement. I have to give the bastard props for his manipulation skills, if he’s done this. Which he has. Who else could it be?

Mae nods slowly, confirming my suspicions with that one dip of her head. “He came by this morning, to speak to Mrs. DuCate.”

“In her bedroom?”

Mae cants her head. “Her study, but it’s next to her bedroom.”

“Asshole,” I hiss, incensed.

Mae circles her hand through the air. “Could you explain for the folks who aren’t inside your head?”

“I need to speak to Ben.” I stand up, discovering that fury is way better for injecting courage than a miniature bottle of whiskey that’s been in my glovebox for ages.

Not bothering to hold my ripped thigh split together, I march toward the varnished doors before Mae can stop me. Wrenching them open, I stride in, with all the confidence I wish I could’ve had earlier. Still, the reaction is the same: outrage from Mrs. DuCate, shock from Ben, indifference from Mr. DuCate.

As they stare, I unfasten the lobster-claw clasp and dangle the pricey piece from my forefingers, secretly relishing in Mrs. DuCate’s sky-high horror. “I believe this is yours, Mrs. DuCate,” I say, handing it over to her. “Sorry for the mix-up, but if I’d known it was yours, I wouldn’t have paired it with my best dress. By the way, Mr. DuCate, you’re wrong—I’ve worked more high-brow events than you’ve probably been to. I know the difference between white tie and black tie. No one said we were doing “country club casual,” or I’d have stopped by J. Crew on the way.”

I shouldn’t antagonize, but damn it, I’m going to. They haven’t given a single thought to my feelings while they’ve been tucked away back here, so I’m going to show them the same courtesy. I can tell it strikes a nerve, by the way Mr. DuCate’s bushy brows fold halfway over his eyelids. If Mrs. DuCate’s mouth falls open any further, she’s going to need a flycatcher.

She snatches the necklace out of my hand and brandishes it at Ben. “If you roll horse manure in glitter, it’s still horse manure!” she hisses at her son. “Did you think you could bedazzle her, and we’d be fooled?”

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