PART 1
I’m seventy years old. I’ve been raising my granddaughter, Poppy, alone since we lost her parents in a car accident three years ago.
We live in the old house where my husband and I spent most of our married life before he passed. Money is tight. Some months I have to choose between filling my prescriptions and buying Poppy new shoes. There’s a pot under the leak in my kitchen ceiling.
But that little girl has never once complained. She is my sunshine.
Every Friday we go to Walmart for milk, bread, and whatever’s on sale. That Friday I stood in the juice aisle holding a carton of orange juice. Six dollars. Poppy loves it. I put it in the cart. Took it out.
“Grandma, it’s okay,” Poppy said. “We can get the water kind.”
She’s seven. She shouldn’t know how to say that.
“Next week, sweetheart,” I told her, and put the carton back.
We cut through the candy aisle so she could look at the Halloween bags. Suddenly she crouched and reached behind a box.
“Grandma. Somebody left a treasure.”
In her palm sat a gold ring with a diamond bigger than anything I’d ever seen outside a jewelry store window.
My heart started pounding. I looked around. The aisle was empty. For one shameful second I thought: Nobody saw. Slip it in your purse. I thought about the roof, the juice, the pills I’d been cutting in half. That ring could pay for all of it.
“Grandma?” Poppy looked up at me. “Do you think somebody’s crying because they lost it?”
My face went hot. I heard my mother’s voice: We don’t take what isn’t ours. Was I really going to start stealing at seventy, with my granddaughter holding my hand?
“Let’s find out, sweetheart.”
We were headed toward customer service when a woman burst through the front doors. Mid-forties, mascara streaking down her cheeks, one shoe untied. She glanced over her shoulder like someone was chasing her.
“Please! Has anyone turned in a diamond ring? I was here twenty minutes ago!”
Poppy ran straight to her. “Ma’am, is this yours?”
The woman froze, then dropped to her knees, clutching the ring to her chest. “Thank you. Oh my God, thank you.” She looked up at Poppy and studied her face, stunned, as if she were seeing a ghost.
“Was it your wedding ring, dear?” I asked.
“No. It’s much more complicated than that. You really saved my life.”
Her phone rang. She glanced at the screen, went pale, and hurried outside. I never even got her name.
We walked home with our groceries, and I thought that was the end of it.
I was wrong.
At 7:15 the next morning, someone pounded on my front door. A black SUV sat at the curb. A tall man in a dark suit stood on my porch holding a large envelope. I kept the chain on.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you the woman whose granddaughter found a diamond ring yesterday?”
My stomach tightened. “Who’s asking?”
He glanced back at the SUV and lowered his voice. “My name is Spencer. Ma’am, I need you to see something right now. We’ve been looking for you for years.”
PART 2
“For me?”
“For you and your granddaughter.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer. He pulled a photograph from the envelope and slid it through the gap in the door. I almost refused it, but then I noticed the ring.
A smiling woman stood beside a teenage girl, her arm around the girl’s shoulders. On her finger was the same enormous diamond Poppy had found. I looked closer at the girl. The smile. The dark hair. Those familiar eyes.
My hands went cold. It was Lorna, my daughter-in-law, Poppy’s mother. I had known her since she was twenty, but I’d never seen a picture of her as a teenager.
I took the chain off. “Where did you get this?”
“That’s our mother, Rosalind. And that’s my sister Lorna.”
“Lorna never had a brother.”
“She never told you?”
“She said she didn’t speak to her father. That’s all.”
“Her father is my father.”
“And the woman at Walmart?”
“My other sister, Tabitha. The ring was our mother’s. She wanted Lorna’s first child to have it.”
“Then why didn’t Lorna’s child get it?”
“Dad wouldn’t give it up. He cut Lorna off nine years ago. Tabitha took the ring from his nightstand two days ago. She was bringing it to you.”
“She stole it.”
“Yes.”
“Why not just ask him?”
“He won’t even say Lorna’s name.”
“How did you find us?”
“We’d been trying to find Lorna for years. Three months ago an investigator turned up a guardianship record naming you and Poppy. That’s when we learned she had died.” His voice cracked. “We should have tried harder.”
“It’s been three years.”
“I know. We sent two letters through a law firm.”
I thought of the kitchen drawer full of unopened envelopes.
“What do you want?”
“My father is dying. The doctors give him weeks. Tabitha and I want Poppy to meet him before he goes.”
“And your father?”