“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I sat in the common room and wrote down the shoe sizes of every single child currently living at Riverside. Thirty-two kids, Rachel.”
“I have a block-chat with the local business owners,” Mr. Patel explained, gesturing to the rows of identical black packaging. “Janelle next door shared the parking lot video there around midnight.”
“I can’t believe it,” I whispered.
“It already had a hundred thousand views. When Denise texted me Maria’s list at 4:00 AM, I went straight to my clearance stockroom. I cleared out every leftover black box from last season. Then the neighbors started knocking on my shop door before dawn, dropping off their kids’ outgrown pairs to fill the gaps.”
“It already had a hundred thousand views.”
Before I could swallow the lump in my throat, another car pulled up. A reporter and a cameraman hopped out.
“The video went fully viral on TikTok over the night,” the reporter said. “We tracked the uploader, who pointed us to this neighborhood. Are you the mother of the girl from the video?”
Right then, Diane’s white SUV slammed to a halt behind the news car. She threw her door open.
The morning sun caught the massive sapphire drops swinging at her ears: the heavy, expensive armor she always put on when she was ready to destroy someone.
She threw her door open.
“Rachel! What on earth is this circus?” Diane hissed, entirely ignoring the news camera that immediately pivoted toward her. “Janelle sent me a screenshot of some disgusting internet video.
“Diane, don’t start—”
“The whole country is watching this! Have you lost your mind? Get these trash boxes off the lawn before—”
Diane’s gaze dropped from my face, past the reporter, and landed squarely on Maria.
“No, it’s you,” she whispered, taking a blind step backward.
“Rachel! What on earth is this circus?”
Maria stood tall on our lawn, holding her daughter’s hand. “Hello, Diane.”
The reporter’s pen instantly hit the notepad. The cameraman zoomed in.
“You… you know each other?” I asked, looking between them.
“She knows me,” Maria finally said. “I cleaned her house for two years, Rachel. Until the afternoon she noticed her sapphire bracelet was missing from her dresser.”
Diane took another step back. “Maria, don’t you dare—”
“You… you know each other?”
“She told the agency I stole it,” Maria continued, looking straight into the camera lens. “She didn’t call the police, but she made sure I was blacklisted from every estate in her circle.”
“You’re a liar!”
“I lost my apartment three months later. My daughter and I have been living at the Shelter since February.”
The entire street went dead silent. The only sound was the faint hum of the video camera.
I looked at the heavy blue stones at Diane’s ears. And then, my memory triggered.
Two Christmases ago. Diane was laughing lightly at the dinner table about how her sapphire bracelet had “magically turned up” in the lining of an old winter coat.
She had said it carelessly, entirely unbothered by the fact that she had already ruined a woman’s life over it.
My memory triggered.
And I had sat there. I had let it pass, because keeping the peace with Diane was easier than starting a war.
“It turned up,” I said. “Didn’t it, Diane? The bracelet. You told us at Christmas it was in your coat.”
