“Don’t tell me,” Trish shot back, nervous. Her gaze shifted to the girls. “Get out, all of you.”

“What’s goin’ on?” Missy asked, entering the bedroom.

“Get out!” Trish shouted, and Giulia recoiled.

“What’sa matter, T?”

Yolanda shook her head, her expression muzzy. “No way, girl. Time to party.”

“Get out, all of you!” Trish exploded, and the girls jumped, confused. Missy fled outside, followed by Yolanda.

“Jeez, T.” Giulia was bewildered. “All this, ’cause of a ring? What’d I do?”

“Just go, G. You and Mary, get outta my house.” Trish stepped forward suddenly and pushed her.

“What the-” Giulia stumbled back, hurt.

“Go!” Trish screamed, and Giulia’s lined eyes flew wide open.

“Giulia, please go.” Mary gave her the nod, and Giulia headed out the door.

Trish turned on Mary. “You, too. Go.”

“No, Trish.” Mary set her jaw. “I’m not going. This ends here and now.”

“Get out.” Trish shoved Mary against the desk, pushing her off balance, and her arms pinwheeled, knocking the bulletin board off the wall with a loud clunk.

“Trish?” Mrs. Gambone called from downstairs. “What’s goin’ on up there?”

“Ma, don’t come up!” Trish shouted, but Mary grabbed her arm.

“She talks to me or I tell the cops. Which is it?”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Trish shot back, her teeth clenched.

“Come up, Mrs. Gambone,” Mary shouted, going to the door with Trish on her heels.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

“W hat’s going on here?” Mrs. Gambone appeared in the doorway. She looked down at the bulletin board on the floor, then up at Trish and Mary in surprise. “Are you fighting?”

“Ma, don’t tell her anything,” Trish said, frantic. “Don’t say anything.”

Mary ignored her. “Mrs. Gambone,” she said, “where is Trish’s opal ring? You had it and the cops found it in the alley, beside Bobby’s-”

“No, Ma, it’s not true,” Trish interrupted, but Mrs. Gambone only blinked in response.

Mary said, “It is true, Mrs. Gambone. Tell me how it got there, in the alley.”

“Ma, no.” Trish wailed and threw her arms around her mother. But Mrs. Gambone stood oddly still, her lined face a mask, and in the next second, her features seemed to surrender, her eyebrows sloping down, her eyelids sagging, and her thin lips drawn at the corners of her mouth.

“I need to sit down,” she said, wearily, and when Trish released her, she walked to the bed.

“Tell me what happened.” Mary pulled up the desk chair, and Mrs. Gambone eased onto the edge of the bed like a much older woman. She folded her hands in her lap, and her shoulders slumped, her chest almost concave in the pink sweatshirt.

Trish sat beside her, her arms around her. “Ma, you don’t have to tell her anything, you know that. They can’t prove anything.”

“Yes, they can.” Mary looked directly at Mrs. Gambone. “They know about the ring. All the girls know Trish didn’t have it. Sooner or later, the truth’s going to come out.”

“No, Ma-,” Trish began, but her mother cut her off with a wave.

“I want to…I just don’t know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” Mary answered, her heart beginning to hammer. “That night. Trish’s birthday.”

“No, that’s not the beginning.” Mrs. Gambone shook her head, and Trish seemed to grow still at her side. “The beginning was a long time ago, when Bobby turned on Trish, yellin’ at her, makin’ her miserable. Abusin’ her. That was the beginning.”

“Okay.”

“I couldn’t do anything. Trish couldn’t do anything.” Mrs. Gambone stopped and looked at her daughter with love, then reached out and brushed a stray tendril from her forehead. “Right, baby?”

Trish nodded, tears welling in her eyes.

“It’s okay now. He’s gone.”

Mary felt a chill, waiting, and Mrs. Gambone’s gaze returned to Mary, her manner almost conversational.

“I could see how unhappy she was, but she didn’t complain. Trish was never a complainer. She was always a tough girl, a strong girl, like me. Never asked nobody for nothing’. Always supported myself. Never had a man support me. I’m proud a that.”

“You should be,” Mary said, meaning it.

“Trish’s father, he was the same as Bobby. Nice in the beginning, to sucker you in, then it all turns to crap. He ran aroun’, he drank, he started knockin’ me aroun’. I didn’t take it. I wouldn’t take it. I wasn’t one a those wimps you see on TV. I threw his ass outta here. I made my own money, down at the shop. I didn’t need his.”

“I understand.” Mary did. That Mrs. Gambone had lived a hard life was written all over her face.

“Trish couldn’t do that with Bobby. She couldn’t throw him out, not with him connected. She was trapped and she knew it. So did I.” Mrs. Gambone eyed Mary hard, her crows’-feet deep. “How do you think that feels? A mother, knowin’ your baby’s dyin’ a little, every day? Day by day?”

Mary couldn’t answer. She was in no position to judge. For a minute, she was thinking of another baby.

“So that night, on her birthday, she told me what she was afraid of, and I was afraid, too. I was on pins and needles all week, worryin’ about her, crazy that that piece of garbage would hurt my daughter-maybe even kill my daughter-on the very day I’d brought her into this world. I hated him for that, I hated him deep in my heart for that.” Mrs. Gambone’s features darkened. “That night, Trish was gonna call me to tell me she was okay. I waited for her call, but the phone never rang. When I finally got her message, she was afraid, but I couldn’t hear all of it. The connection was so bad. I didn’t even know where she was.”

Mary remembered. Her cell phone hadn’t worked in the Poconos either.

“I knew her voice, the way she sounded, the tone, from when she was a baby. A mother knows. She was afraid, terrified, for her life. The message said Bobby just left the room, and he was gonna be back and she thought he was gonna kill her. Then, next thing I knew I didn’t hear anything else. The phone went dead, and I screamed. I screamed, I couldn’t stop. My friends, they were all here, they couldn’t stop me. I thought, he just killed my baby.”

Mary swallowed, recalling that night at her parents’ house, and Mrs. Gambone’s raw anguish.

“I called the cops, I called the Missing Persons, I did everything I was supposed to do. That’s when I went to your parents, I was beside myself.”

Trish took her mother’s hands in hers.

“After I went home, I told everybody to go, that I wanted to sleep. I needed to be alone. I sent them home, I made them go and I had my house to myself. I was alone, really alone, because Trish was gone.” Mrs. Gambone looked at her daughter again with a profoundly sad smile. Her eyes were dry but Trish’s weren’t, and she continued her story, matter-of-factly. “I went into her bedroom and sat here a long time. Right here. I looked at the desk, and the shelves, and the stuffed animals and the pictures on the bulletin board. I saw all the things she loved in this room.”

Mrs. Gambone paused, her gaze wandering around the room almost happily, and Mary could see her soak in every detail, the times of a child’s life, lost everywhere but in the memory of her mother.

Mrs. Gambone continued, “Then I saw the ring, on the floor next to the night table. I gave it to her for her twenty-first birthday. It was right there, like a sign. I picked it up and I held it and I could almost feel my baby, alive again. I could see it on her finger. I could see her hand. I could even see her face when I gave it to her, how happy she was, and now she was dead. She was miserable for so long, and I let it happen. I stood by and let it happen.”

“No, Ma,” Trish whispered, but Mrs. Gambone shook her head.

“Yes, I did. I didn’t take care of you. I was put on this earth to take care of you and I let you down, all that time. Maybe he didn’t kill you that night, but he killed you a long time ago. You’re not the girl you used to be, light and happy inside, you know that. I knew it, too, and I just watched. Your own mother just watched. I put the ring on my finger, just to have some of you, whatever was left.”