Page 33 of The Girl with a Secret
“Your father is taking me to dinner.” Her mother’s voice held a faintly petulant tone that made Rosa tense.
“Is that dress new?” she asked, trying to sound interested rather than censorious. It looked couture, and they certainly didn’t have the money for that.
“Yes, as it happens,” her mother replied, turning away. “Now I must find my pearls.”
She went back into her bedroom, while Rosa slowly followed, standing in the doorway as a sense of unease deepened inside her, spreading outward.
“Mother, where did you get the money for that dress?” she asked in a voice that sounded hollow. Shefelthollow, with an emptiness inside that she knew would soon swirl with dread. “Did you sell something?” It was surely the only possibility.
“Oh, what does it matter?” her mother exclaimed, sounding impatient. “Really, Rosa, it is so unbecoming to argue over pennies. You are sounding more and more like a fishwife, and you look like one too.” She nodded toward Rosa’s hands, now clenched into fists at her sides. “You have positively ruined your skin, you know, at that little restaurant.”
“That’s because I spendtenhoursa day scrubbing pots and pans to pay the rent!” Rosa retorted, her voice rising in her anger. “While you sit at home and fritter away those very precious pennies!”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed, flashing with fury. “Those pennies belong to your father, every single one,” she snapped, her tone turning dangerous. “And never forget it.”
“I earn?—”
“Pennies, yes. I am quite aware of how little you earn, Rosa.”
Rosa bit her lip, hard enough to hurt, knowing there was no point having a reasonable discussion when her mother was in such a querulous mood. And she was in such a querulous mood, Rosa knew, because her father had not yet come home. Would he remember his promise to take her out for dinner? Rosa doubted it.
Still not trusting herself to speak, she left her mother’s bedroom and went to her own, tossing her handbag onto the bed with a growl of frustration. Her mother’s dress had to have cost more than a month of her wages. A sudden, unwelcome suspicion crept over her like a dark, dense fog. Surely not.Surely her mother wouldn’t have…
With her heart starting to beat hard, Rosa ran to her dresser and yanked open the top drawer. She riffled through the few,well-worn garments there, but there was no reassuringly heavy sliver of stone nestled among the cotton and silk. Her precious shard of emerald was gone.
CHAPTER 14
An icy sense of disbelief stole through Rosa in a numbing wave.Gone. The emerald Sophie had given her, that she’d vowed to keep safe, was gone.
And Rosa knew what had happened to it.
She whirled away from her dresser and stalked out to the living room, where her mother was standing in front of a tarnished, age-spotted mirror, primping her hair. She stilled for a second, her hands to her hair, her narrowed gaze meeting Rosa’s furious one in the mirror before she, quite deliberately, Rosa thought, continued to arrange her hair.
“Mother!” Rosa’s voice shook. “What have you done with it?”
“Done with what?”
“Myemerald.” Her voice split the air in a jagged cry. “Did you…pawnit? For that dress?” Rosa didn’t even know why she was asking; it was already painfully obvious. How on earth else would her mother have been able to afford such a dress? Unless she’d sold her own jewels, but Rosa already knew she would never have done that.
“Oh, Rosa, really.” Her mother expelled an exasperated breath. “Such a childish fuss about what really amounted to little more than a trinket.”
“Atrinket? Some trinket that paid forthat.” Rosa pointed a shaking finger at her mother’s glamorous ensemble. “How much did you get for it?”
Her mother pressed her lips together as she turned away from the mirror. “Not as much as I should have.”
“Why?” The word burst out of her as she clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms. “Why take my little bit of emerald, when you have a whole case of jewels?” She hadn’t even realized her mother had known about it; she certainly hadn’t told her. Sometimes, Rosa realized, she forgot how much her mother watched and understood.
Her mother drew herself up, her eyes flashing with genuine ire. “Rosa, my jewels are precious, given to me by your father. I would never sell them.”
“But you’d sellmine.”
“It was a little shard, given to you by a girl you barely knew,” her mother snapped in dismissal. “And the reason I didn’t get much for it was because it hadn’t been cut properly.”
Rosa stared at her mother, her palms positively itching to slap her. In that moment, she thought she genuinely hated her, this woman who had given birth to her, who was meant to love her absolutely. Shedespisedher, for her utter selfishness, her arrogant refusal to see Rosa’s perspective at all, ever. “You had no right,” she said quietly. “No right at all.”
“Rosa, I am yourmother?—”
“And when have you ever acted like it?” Rosa burst out; to her shame, she sounded more hurt than angry.
