I froze.
“Because they were Hannah’s!”
He looked at them for a long moment. Then he shook his head.
I could see the tremor.
“Those aren’t hers, Marlene,” he said, his voice flat. “Lots of jewelers make piano earrings. It’s a common design.”
“Common?” I said. “You designed them yourself!”
My husband suddenly grabbed the edge of the kitchen counter so hard that his knuckles looked like bone.
“Throw them away! Hannah is dead!”
I couldn’t understand because Hannah was missing, not dead.
Rick wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Those aren’t hers.”
***
I slept in the guest room that night. I cried until morning, holding those earrings against my collarbone the way I used to hold my daughter when she was small.
Sometime before dawn, I finally drifted off.
A knock woke me up.
I pulled on my robe and opened the front door. Two officers stood on the porch, badges out, their faces careful.
“Mrs. Rhodes?” one of them asked.
I slept in the guest room.
My heart climbed into my throat.
“Yes?”
The same officer glanced over my shoulder. I turned. Rick was standing barefoot in the hallway, still wearing his old robe.
“Ma’am, we need to speak with both of you,” the officer said. “We have significant new information about Hannah. This is about the earrings you found yesterday.”
My breath caught in my throat.
Rick was standing barefoot.
“You found Hannah?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes stayed on my husband.
Then he quietly said, “Ma’am, it’s time you heard what your husband has really been hiding for the past ten years.”
Rick didn’t say a single word.
I felt faint, so Detective Palmer guided me to the couch while Detective Gomez stayed near the door.
Rick hadn’t moved.
“You found Hannah?”
“Mrs. Rhodes,” Palmer said, “the woman at the flea market, Cheryl, called our tip line yesterday. She’d seen Hannah’s photo on one of those old cold-case segments, and something about the way you reacted to those earrings stuck with her. Her son told her where that estate box came from. It belonged to a woman named Judith, who passed away two months ago.”
