The Stone Necklace

by Carla Damron

  “Sorry,” Sims said, dropping down on the bench again.

  Elliott stroked his goatee as he regarded their brother. “You okay?”

  Sims groped in his pocket for another cigarette, his hand shaking as he lit it. Becca eyed Elliott, waiting for his reaction.

  “Stupid,” Elliott muttered. “Really stupid. You still smoke? Wasn’t what happened to Dad any kind of wake up call for you?”

  “Shut up.” Sims flashed an awkward smile at a couple hurrying by.

  “Damn it, Sims. You have a kid. What’s the tobacco doing to her?”

  “I never smoke in the house, by the way. Or the car.”

  Elliott looked at Becca for confirmation. “He’s got a tree out back where he keeps an ashtray,” she said.

  “But smoking still kills you. That’s not fair to Connie or Allie. Or to the rest of us.” Elliott snapped down the telescoping handle on his suitcase and plopped down beside Sims. His nails were perfectly trimmed because he played guitar. Becca’s nails looked like they’d been clipped in a blender.

  Sims puffed out smoke away from them and asked, “Did Mom pay for your ticket?”

  Elliott replied with an embarrassed shrug. “I didn’t have the cash.”

  “Of course not.” Sims studied the glow at the end of his cigarette. “You can’t keep going back to that well, little brother.”

  Elliott shuffled his feet. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they have bills, too. Mom’s illness was expensive in more ways than one. And in case you haven’t noticed, the real estate business isn’t exactly booming.”

  “You mean . . .” Elliott glanced at Becca like he didn’t want her to hear, and it made her want to laugh. Neither brother had a clue. When Dad had taken care of Mom during all those months, she’d heard him arguing with his partner. Mr. Calloway yelling, “properties don’t sell themselves” because Dad spent so much time away from work. Once Mom got better, Dad started working six days a week, sometimes staying past dinner time. Maybe that’s why he had the heart attack.

  “This still seems surreal to me,” Sims said. “We had so many false alarms with him. I almost went over there yesterday morning. I came this close—” He held up a hand, index finger an inch from his thumb. “To stopping in for a cup of coffee before work. God, I wish I had.”

  “I doubt you could have prevented what happened,” Elliott said.

  Sims snuffed out the cigarette on the sole of his shoe, then spun to face them. “Did you think Mom would die?”

  “Didn’t you?” Elliott answered.

  “Well yeah. But you weren’t here. You didn’t see how bad it was.”

  It had been bad. Even Sims didn’t know all of it. Besides the surgery and the chemotherapy that took all Mom’s hair and made her thin as a drinking straw and left her so weak she could barely leave the bed. Besides Dad’s fussing and worrying when things were at their worst and they had to stop her treatment until she got stronger. Sims didn’t know how terrible—how fragile—things got. After everything she had done, Dad took care of her and got her well. If Mom got a miracle, then Dad should get one, too.

  “It’s hard to leave the city,” Elliott said. “You give up a few gigs, it can cut you off from future bookings.”

  “Well you’re here now,” Sims said, with a hint of sarcasm. “You better prepare yourself. Mom’s cancer was just the first act. Dad, well Dad—”

  Becca glared at him, daring him to finish the sentence. Dad was going to get well. Period. If her brothers were too stupid to believe it, then the hell with them.

  Elliott inched closer, his hand reaching for the back of her neck. “You okay, Bec?”

  “We should go.” She marched away from them to Sims’s car. A few seconds later her brothers followed, and they were headed back to the hospital.

  Back to the waiting.

  CHAPTER 6

  “There’s a voice inside you that can guide you to a happier life. You must listen to it. The voice says: Today I will persist until I succeed. I will live in the moment.” Dr. Alan Allaway’s British accent, like hot chocolate to her ears, resonated from the CD player in Tonya Ladson’s small bedroom.

  “I will live in the moment,” Tonya repeated.

  “I will plan my future instead of worrying about it,” Dr. Allaway said.

  She had turned on Dr. Allaway to get her mind off the nightmare that had played over and over in her sleep. An accident, though not like the real one. Byron pinned inside a yellow truck, screaming for her, but she couldn’t get the door open, and she ran barefoot through shattered glass surrounding the vehicle, and then the engine caught fire.

  “I choose to act purposefully, with the attitude of a warrior,” Dr. Allaway said.

  Tonya shook her head to dislodge the dream. Byron was safe and chattering away in the bedroom. She was safe. She would listen to the “You Control Your Own Destiny” CD and not let the car crash take over her life any more. She was a survivor.

  She studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror and listened to: “A warrior attacks his day. He does not let others control him.”

  “A warrior.” She forced strength in her voice that she didn’t feel, but sometimes acting like you believed led you to believe. Dr. Allaway had taught her that in Lesson One. This was why she had put on the suit. She clipped the tags that dangled from her sleeve and smoothed down the collar. She loved the silky weave of the fabric and the way the tailored jacket hid her remaining baby weight pounds. It made her feel taller. She’d purchased her new “power suit” last week during a hurried lunch hour and hidden it in their closet before John got home. When the Visa bill came, she would bury it and pay off the purchase with money she’d have to save from gas and groceries. John might not notice but if he did, she’d explain that it was an investment in their future.

  She stepped closer to the mirror. The butterfly-shaped bruise on her face had deepened to a plum purple, the bottom edge black. From a distance, she suspected, it might look like an abstract painting of a misshapen flower. She usually accented her brown eyes, like small coffee beans, with mascara and eyeliner but hadn’t attempted that since the wreck. Maybe she would this morning. Another step toward getting back to normal.

  With careful strokes of the cover-up stick, she tried to soften the shade of the bruise, but there was no hiding it. Yet few people asked her what had happened. Marion knew, of course, but nobody else at work had said, “What happened to your face?” Not Peter, the mail guy, or Ruth, the witchy paralegal, or even Mr. Patel, her boss’s partner.

  “You know why? It’s because they think you got punched out by your husband,” Marion had explained. “Us southerners don’t pry into that kind of domestic matter. We’ll ask you where you work or how much you make or who your mama is, but we don’t want to know if your husband beats the stuffing out of you when you get home.”

  Those words sickened Tonya. She wished she had a badge that read, “I was hurt in a car accident,” so people would know. And what if John had given her the black eyes? Shouldn’t people be concerned about that? Shouldn’t someone say, “If your husband did that, you need to get away from him. How can I help?”

  She could hear John in the bedroom. She glanced in the trashcan to make sure the price tags were hidden. She was very glad she had the suit. She felt bold, like someone in charge of her life. She was not a victim. Tonya Ladson was a warrior.

  “Byron dumped his cereal again,” John said as he pushed open the door because he’d apparently forgotten how to knock. She glanced down at her outfit, wondering if he’d notice it was brand new. Probably not. He noticed very little about her these days.

  “The broom’s in the hall closet,” she said.

  John wedged himself in behind her and reached for his toothbrush. The fruity smell of his aftershave overwhelmed the tiny room. “A broom won’t get the milk up. And I’ve got to get going.”

  So did Tonya, because she was not going to be late today.

  “That bruise
gets prettier every day,” John commented.

  She did not appreciate his sarcasm. The bruise was an ever-present reminder of what she’d been through and survived. She didn’t even know if Mr. Hastings had.

  John squeezed a perfect pale blue cord of toothpaste onto his brush. She watched from the mirror to see if he’d bother to replace the top. He caught her watching and did.

  “Guess I’d better go clean up Byron’s mess,” she said.

  THIRTY-THREE MINUTES LATER Tonya sipped coffee at her desk, feeling smug that she’d arrived a full seven minutes before she was supposed to. “A warrior must be prompt to the battleground,” Dr. Allaway had said. She glanced at the new stack of scrambled notes that Mr. Jamison had left for her to type. If he wasn’t such a dinosaur and would use the new six hundred-gig computer that gathered dust on his desk, her job might be tolerable. No, she would not think negative thoughts like that. Not today. She lifted the top sheet and skimmed it. She’d mastered Mr. Jamison’s scrawl long ago, so the letter requesting medical files for a worker’s comp case should take little time. As she opened the file on her computer, she heard the door creak open behind her. Marion was getting to work on time?

  “Tonya? Got a minute?” Not Marion, but Ruth Polinsky, the chief paralegal, dressed in her tweedy brown suit, her hair cut short like a helmet around her head.

  Tonya leapt to her feet, fighting a strange urge to salute the woman. “Sure.”

  Ruth came closer, her wrinkled lips curved into the usual frown. She handed Tonya the pleadings from yesterday. “Did you proof this?”

  Tonya scanned the document. Red circles from Ruth’s pen scattered the page like buckshot.

  “And I don’t mean did you proof it on the computer,” Ruth continued. “I mean did you print it out and edit it on hardcopy? It’s the only way you’re going to catch these kind of mistakes.”

  Tonya swallowed. “I’m sorry. I’ll get right—”

  “I don’t want an apology.” Ruth interrupted. “What I’d like to see is fewer errors. A little attention to detail. This is a prestigious law firm. We expect no less than the best from each of our employees.”

  A prestigious law firm might be a stretch. They handled worker’s comp claims, family law, and the occasional pharmaceutical suit, but it wasn’t like everybody had heard of the Jamison and Patel firm. Tonya could see Marion watching from the hallway. No way she’d enter the room until Ruth (Marion called her “Ruthless”) was long gone.

  She thought of a hundred excuses she could make. Heck, half of the errors might have been Mr. Jamison’s; the old guy didn’t exactly embrace Ruth’s “attention to detail” mantra. But excuses weren’t the way to go. She looked down. At work for less than twenty minutes and she’d already betrayed the suit. Tonya forced herself to meet Ruth’s iron gaze.

  “You’ll redo this pleading for me?” Ruth asked. No, demanded.

  “I will,” Tonya replied, doing her best to channel the inner warrior. “I’ll bring it to you before lunch.”

  “Good.” Ruth turned to leave, but hesitated. “I was sorry to hear about your accident.”

  “Thanks,” Tonya answered, surprised that Ruth even knew.

  “Your little boy was hurt?” Ruth’s voice softened the tiniest bit.

  “His collarbone. But we were lucky. It could have been much worse,” Tonya replied.

  “That’s a very healthy perspective,” Ruth replied, her eyes shifting down to the suit.

  Tonya straightened. Warrior.

  “I’ll look forward to your revisions then.”

  As soon as Ruth exited, Marion burst in, a Starbucks cup in one hand and her bulging bucket-shaped purse in the other. Her hair sported a pale blond stripe from an unfortunate tinting experiment a few weekends before. Not quite skunk-like, but almost.

  “Ruthless ream you out?” Marion asked.

  “I need to pay more attention to detail.”

  “Because if you did, then the paralegals would have nothing to do. They get the big bucks, let them do some of the work.” Marion plopped into her chair and looked for a space on her chaotic desk to set her coffee.

  Tonya glanced at her own work area. She’d lost control of her stacks, too. There was a nine-inch pile of case summaries that needed to be typed and filed. Dictation to be completed. Billing sheets to be formatted and mailed out, not to mention the notes from Mr. Jamison to be typed. She would tackle the clutter today. After finishing the pleading for Ruth, she would launch an attack on pile number one and wouldn’t stop until she was done, working through lunch if she needed to. Tomorrow, she would tackle the billing forms, getting them to Ruth before they were due.

  “Hey, I have some news for you,” Marion said. “I called the hospital to check on that Mr. Hastings guy.”

  Tonya froze. “How did you get through?”

  “My cousin who works there gave me an update. The guy’s still in cardiac intensive care. Not conscious though.”

  “But he’s alive.”

  “Definitely alive.”

  “Thank God.”

  Relief flooded her. Maybe her prayers would be answered. Maybe Mr. Hastings would recover. She turned to her computer. She was a warrior, reporting for duty.

  TONYA NARROWED HER EYES against the setting sun as she drove home. After plowing through more work than she’d done in weeks, she’d left work a half hour later than usual, arriving at Byron’s daycare minutes before facing the ten dollar fine for late pick-up. Finishing all the reports had exhausted her, so she opted to get Chinese take-out for supper. She’d spent less than ten dollars, which wasn’t much for a meal, and she could take the leftovers to work tomorrow.

  When her cell phone rang, she glanced down at the number: her mother. She did not answer because of her pledge to not use the device while driving. As soon as she pulled in behind John’s car, she dialed back.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Tonya? Hadn’t heard from you in days. I thought you were dead or something.”

  Tonya had always hated it when her mother said things like that but this time it cut deeper. She had almost died, hadn’t she?

  “How’s the nose?”

  “Blue. No, purple.” Tonya touched the tender flesh beside each nostril.

  “I still think you should come by the office and let Dr. Padris have a look. You don’t want to end up with a crooked nose.” Tonya’s mother, a registered nurse, worked part time for a plastic surgery practice. In the past two years, she’d had fillers injected in her face, fat removed from her butt, and spider veins erased from her calves. Tonya wondered if her mother even got a paycheck; maybe they paid her in procedures.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Guess what Buddy found out today?” Her mother’s voice climbed the scale. She would practically sing whatever news she had about her precious youngest child.

  “He’s got syphilis?”

  “Tonya!” A lower pitch to berate the oldest. “No. He got accepted at Wofford. Isn’t that grand? He still hasn’t heard from Duke but says he’d like to go to Wofford. Of course, his father is grinning like the Cheshire cat, thinking of his son going to his alma mater.”

  “That’s great.” Tonya glanced back at her own son snoozing in his car seat, the splint securing his arm to his torso. So far, he’d hardly cried at all about the broken collar bone. Her brave little man.

  “Buddy’s hoping for a baseball scholarship. Lawrence says he has quite an arm.”

  “Lawrence says, huh?” Tonya never got to call her stepfather “Dad” or “Daddy.” Tonya’s parents separated when she was seven. Back then, her mom worked for a gynecological practice and married Dr. Lawrence White days after the divorce. Tonya shuffled between households—her mother’s stone and brick five-bedroom castle to her father’s stifling two-bedroom apartment—over the next ten years. Neither place felt much like home.

  “Does Buddy know what he wants to study? Think he’ll go pre-med?” Tonya asked to be polite.

  “Wouldn’t that be
something! Though I wouldn’t mind if he pursued nursing. If he got an advanced practice degree, he could work anywhere and make a great living.”

  Tonya had heard these same words spoken about her before she married John: “Go to nursing school, Tonya. You can write your own ticket then.” Of course, there had been no offer to help with tuition.

  Tonya spotted John standing in the doorway, undoubtedly wondering why she was still sitting in the rental car. When she waved, he didn’t wave back. “I need to get going, Mom.”

  “Okay. But if you want us to check out that nose—”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  John had retreated into the house. Unloading a drowsy toddler, a purse, and a large bag of Chinese takeout took some maneuvering, but motherhood had taught her many skills. As she pushed through the kitchen door she set Byron on the floor. “Daddy’s here. Go find him!”

  She watched him trot off into the living room and heard John making monster noises that had Byron giggling. The bottom of the takeout bag still felt warm as she placed it on the laminate kitchen counter. The tangy smell of teriyaki did not blend well with the stale odor of the dishes piled in the sink. Tonya needed to become a domestic warrior, too. She’d tackle the kitchen when they finished supper. She would wash all the dishes and put them away, not leave them drying in the strainer. She would clean out the fridge and mop the vinyl floor, which was needed after Byron’s cereal mishap that morning. The room would glisten when she was done.

  John had Byron sitting on his shoulders when he entered the room. “Take-out again?” he asked.

  “I got your favorite.”

  John stretched his hands around Byron’s ribs, lifting him over his head before setting him down.

  “I found something I thought was interesting.” John placed a crinkled receipt on the table. “One hundred and fifteen dollars? For what? That suit?”

  Damn it. She had hidden the tags but must have left the receipt in the bag.

  “You think we can afford this?” John’s lip curled up in a half sneer.