Lullaby (The Fable Series, Book 2)

Chapter Sixteen

It's 8.45pm.

Today's Thursday, which is always a busy night at Biblio. So the earliest I should expect my parents back is 11pm. That gives me plenty of time.

Walking quietly up the stairs so that my friends in the living room don't realize where I'm going, I try to picture the last time I rummaged through mom's jewelry box. I would have been a kid back then, maybe five or six years old.

I clearly remember one sunny afternoon in Fall, left at home with gran while mom and dad were at the restaurant. While gran was in the kitchen making our lunch, I crept upstairs to my parent's bedroom. I went for mom's makeup drawer first, smearing first my lips, then my eyelids, with her pale silver eye shadow. Then I took the talcum powder from her dresser and sprinkled it all over my head, watching the snowy clouds of talc floating behind me in the mirror. I think I was trying to turn my hair whiter, which was pretty ridiculous, because it was already a very pale blonde. The finishing touch was a pearl necklace from my mom's jewelry box, which I wrapped around my head like a diadem.

Pleased with my work, I ran downstairs to show gran.

I'll never forget the look on her face as I stepped into the kitchen.

She immediately dropped the plate she'd been holding, her lip quivering as the porcelain shattered into a thousand pieces.

Her face turned pale as death.

She looked like she's seen a ghost.

I began to cry, and she smiled then, weakly and distantly, wiping away my tears. She told me to go wash my face, and that lunch was ready.

But I knew I'd done something terribly wrong, and I've never looked inside mom's jewelry box ever again.

Until now.

Closing the bedroom door quietly behind me, I walk over to the vanity. I sit down on the plush velvet stool, running my hands over the lid of the jewelry box perched in front of the mirror. My fingers explore the grooves in the rippling apple wood, carved by my gran as a wedding gift to my mom. I never noticed before, but the carvings are different to her usual subjects. Most of gran's work has a woodland or a floral theme – oak leaves, acorns, irises and wild hares peeping out from dense foliage. Her art is inspired by the forest, the land. But these carvings are an ode to the sea, an oceanic love song wrought in wood and careful hours.

Just above the latch, a cluster of delicately carved seashells encircles two fish, swimming together to form a circle. The top strip is a riot of tiny sea snails, sea anemones, crabs and corals.

Taking a deep breath, I click open the latch on the box.

Inside, fine gold necklaces spill out of their trays, tangled up with diamond earrings, an emerald bracelet, and the pearl necklace I wrapped around my head as a child.

I lift the tray out of the box, and find more gold necklaces, a mother-of-pearl brooch, more pairs of earrings.

No silver rings shaped like sea snakes biting their own tails.

Damn.

I take every piece of jewelry out of the box, untangling the whole mess in case the ring is hidden in a clump of necklaces and earrings.

But a few minutes later, I've picked through the entire collection and I'm still no closer to finding the ring.

Fine. On to Plan B.

I swing open my mom's wardrobe doors, standing on my tiptoes to reach the hatboxes she keeps at the top of the cupboard.

I open each of them up one by one, searching through old family cutlery, wristwatches, an azure blue silk scarf folded neatly around a large pocket watch on a chain.