I knocked before entering. Victor stood beside a writing desk while an older woman searched a cabinet. She looked up, saw my necklace, and pressed her lips together.
Adrien followed me inside.
“This is absurd,” he said. “We were having a pleasant dinner.”
Victor kept his hands visible on the desk. The scars across his knuckles looked old, pale beneath the lamp.
“I frightened her,” he said. “That wasn’t fair. She deserves an explanation in full.”
The woman placed a narrow folder on the desk. Victor introduced her as Elena, the executor of their late mother’s estate and a longtime family friend.
I did not sit until I had chosen the chair nearest the open door.
Elena looked at Adrien. “Did you remove the necklace from the inventory cabinet?”
“It was Mother’s. She would have wanted it worn.”
“That is not what I asked.”
I touched the clasp. The chain had felt like a promise for fourteen days. Now I was afraid of what holding it might make me part of.
Victor said he had first seen it around my neck when we sat down to dinner. He had not wanted to accuse his brother before everyone. When I entered the hall, he had tried to warn me and made it sound like a threat.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “My anger was with him.”
“Then keep it with him. Tell me what I need to know.”
Elena opened the folder. There was a photograph of the necklace on dark cloth, an appraisal, and a page listing household items still awaiting distribution under the estate.
The necklace had not belonged to Adrien. It remained part of their mother’s estate, intended for Victor under a written bequest. Administration had not yet finished. Adrien had access to the family house and had removed it without asking.
“That was what you meant by the wrong brother?” I asked.
Victor nodded. “A stupid phrase. I meant the gift had come from the wrong person. Not that you belonged with me.”
Relief arrived in a shape I had not expected. I had feared that he was claiming me, or revealing some secret history I ought to know. He was a stranger, and I preferred that truth to any dramatic idea my fear had supplied.
Adrien laughed.
“You’re making a family trinket sound like a crime scene.”
“Is it yours?” I asked him.
He looked at Elena. “We haven’t settled everything.”
“Did you tell me that?”
“It would only have confused you.”
I unclasped the chain. The movement was awkward because my hands were shaking. Nobody reached to help, and I was grateful. I placed it on the desk beside its photograph.
Adrien’s expression changed.
“You’re really going to embarrass me over this?”
“I am trying to understand why you gave me something you couldn’t give.”
Elena lifted a second page but did not turn it toward me. She asked whether Adrien had discussed a financial proposal connected with my studio.
My stomach tightened.
He had. Three weeks earlier, he suggested that I move to a larger space. He knew a landlord, he said. He could provide funding from a family account if I made him a partner.
He had brought paperwork two days before the dinner. I had taken it home without signing. The necklace had arrived the following week, accompanied by a speech about trusting each other.
Victor closed his eyes briefly.
“There is no family investment account available to him,” Elena said.
Adrien leaned over the desk. “There will be, once you stop delaying the estate.”
“That money is subject to estate administration. You cannot promise it to anyone today.”
He turned to me. “It’s a timing issue. We can sort it out.”
I remembered the way he had encouraged me to borrow against my own savings while his contribution cleared. He said the opportunity would vanish if we waited. I had felt guilty for wanting a second opinion.
“What happens if your money doesn’t arrive?”
