The Necklace Genevieve Was Supposed to Be Wearing
Chapter 01 - The Necklace Genevieve Was Supposed to Be Wearing
Doctors gave my six-year-old twins ten days to live, and for the first time in my life every dollar, every weapon, every favor, and every ounce of fear attached to my name meant absolutely nothing.
Dr. Franklin Yates stood beside me while Jonah and Blythe slept behind glass.
My son’s hand rested palm-up on the blanket.
My daughter had turned her face toward the empty chair beside her bed.
They had been sick for almost a year.
Acute leukemia, Yates told me.
Aggressive.
Unlucky.
Then refractory.
A word doctors use when medicine fails and nobody wants to say failure too early.
“We’ve exhausted what they can tolerate,” Yates said.
I looked through the glass.
“How long?”
He took too long to answer.
“Maybe ten days.”
I had heard men beg for their lives.
I had watched people sign away companies because I sat down across from them.
Nothing had ever frightened me like ten days.
Jonah opened his eyes when I went inside.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
Blythe reached for my hand.
Her fingers were thin.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, baby.”
“If I go first, can Jonah come with me?”
My throat closed.
“Nobody’s going anywhere.”
She looked toward the empty chair.
“Mommy went.”
Genevieve.
My wife.
Their mother.
Dead two years.
Even after all that time, the name still arrived with weather attached to it.
Rain on black pavement.
A phone call at 2:14 in the morning.
Her car against a concrete divider outside Kenosha.
A closed casket because the crash had been bad enough that the funeral director recommended I remember her face as it had been.
I agreed.
I had spent two years regretting that.
By three that afternoon, I was back at the Mercer estate outside Chicago because the hospital wanted the twins transferred to a quieter palliative suite the following day.
Palliative.
Another word designed to fit inside the mouth more easily than dying.
Prescott Hale entered my study.
He had run my security for eleven years.
Fifty-three.
Gray at the temples.
Former military.
Never dramatic.
That was why I trusted him.
“She’s still outside.”
I looked up.
“Who?”
“The woman asking about the caregiver position.”
“We aren’t hiring.”
“I told her.”
“Then remove her.”
Prescott didn’t move.
That got my attention.
“What?”
“She says she knows Jonah and Blythe are dying.”
I stood.
Nobody outside immediate family, hospital leadership, and three security people knew Yates’s estimate.
“Name?”
“Elena Ward.”
“Background?”
“Thin.”
“What does that mean?”
“No criminal record under that name. No current employer. Last stable address six months ago. She says she’ll explain only to you.”
“Bring her in.”
Five minutes later, two guards escorted a woman into my study.
She was younger than I expected.
Twenty-nine, maybe.
Brown hair damp from rain.
Worn coat.
Shoes darkened with water.
Her hands were empty.
Her face was not.
Fear.
She looked at me the way people look at a door they know may lock behind them.
“Name.”
“Elena Ward.”
“How do you know about my children?”
“I need to see them.”
“No.”
Her jaw tightened.
“Then I need you to listen before you throw me out.”
Prescott shifted near the door.
Elena noticed.
Then looked back at me.
“I didn’t come here because I need a job.”
“You told the gate you were applying.”
“I needed them to let me stand close enough that somebody would call inside.”
“Bad strategy.”
“It worked.”
I almost admired that.
Almost.
“How do you know about Jonah and Blythe?”
She swallowed.
Then reached beneath the collar of her sweater.
Both guards moved.
I raised one hand.
“Wait.”
Elena slowly pulled out a silver chain.
A small blue stone hung at the end.
My breath vanished.
No.
I knew that necklace.
I bought it in Florence on our first anniversary because Genevieve hated diamonds she had not chosen herself.
The stone was pale blue sapphire.
Almost gray in certain light.
She wore it to breakfast.
To bed.
To both births.
After the crash, I told the funeral director to leave it on her.
“Where did you get that?”
Elena’s fingers tightened around the chain.
“Your wife gave it to me.”
“Impossible.”
“Three weeks before she died.”
The room changed.
Prescott said:
“Lawson—”
I looked at him.
He stopped.
I stepped closer to Elena.
“Genevieve was buried wearing that necklace.”
Elena’s eyes filled.
“No, she wasn’t.”
“You want to think carefully.”
“I have thought about nothing else for two years.”
She removed the necklace.
Set it on my desk.
The clasp had a tiny scratch beside the hinge.
I remembered making it myself.
One night Genevieve caught it on a sweater and swore at me for buying “romantic jewelry engineered by idiots.”
Real.
Or a replica good enough to fool the man who touched it a thousand times.
Then Elena reached into her coat.
Prescott’s hand moved toward his weapon.
Elena froze.
“It’s paper.”
“Slowly,” I said.
She pulled out a folded medical report.
Old paper.
Photocopied several times.
She placed it beside the necklace.
Jonah Mercer.
Blythe Mercer.
Both names printed across the top.
Date:
Seven years ago.
One year before they were born.
I looked up.
“What is this?”
“A reprint from a prenatal genetics database. The system uses their current legal names when records are reissued. The accession date is the original date.”
I stared at her.
“You expect me to understand that?”
“No.”
Her voice shook.
“I expect your doctors to.”
“Which doctors?”
“Not Franklin Yates.”
Prescott moved again.
This time toward the report.
Elena put her hand over it.
“Don’t.”
His face hardened.
I looked between them.
“Why?”
Elena’s breathing changed.
Then:
“Because Genevieve told me not to let anyone in your medical or security chain see the original.”
Prescott went still.
That mattered.
I looked at the report.
A paragraph was highlighted.
GENETIC FINDING REQUIRES SPECIALIST REVIEW BEFORE CYTOTOXIC TREATMENT IF MARROW DISEASE DEVELOPS.
I knew enough words to become afraid.
“Elena.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Your children’s leukemia is real.”
My hand tightened on the paper.
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying they were born with a rare inherited marrow-failure condition that changes how their disease should have been evaluated and treated.”
“Yates would know.”
“He should.”
“Would this have saved them?”
“I don’t know.”
Good answer.
I would have thrown her out if she promised certainty.
She continued.
“But Genevieve believed the original genetic report was removed from their active records.”
I felt the room grow colder.
“By who?”
Elena looked at Prescott.
Then at the closed study door.
“Someone who knew she was investigating.”
I stepped closer.
“How did you know my wife?”
Elena’s face broke slightly.
“Because she found me.”
“Why?”
“I used to work in the records division at Northbridge Genetics.”
The name meant nothing.
Then it did.
Northbridge handled the embryo and prenatal testing when Genevieve underwent fertility treatment.
Elena continued.
“Two years ago, Genevieve asked for an independent copy of the twins’ archived records.”
“Why?”
“She had started questioning Dr. Yates.”
Prescott said:
“That’s enough.”
I turned.
He had never interrupted me like that.
Not once.
Elena whispered:
“You see?”
Prescott’s jaw tightened.
I looked at him.
“Leave.”
“Lawson.”
“Now.”
He did not move.
Then left.
The door closed.
Elena exhaled.
I looked down at the report again.
“Tell me everything.”
She reached into her coat one more time.
Another folded page.
Genevieve’s handwriting.
I knew it instantly.
At the bottom, one sentence had been underlined twice.
If Lawson is reading this, then Franklin has lied to him.
May you like
And beneath it:
Do not trust Prescott with the children until you know why.
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