The Necklace

The necklace was a gift. She had received it seventy-two times before each time in a black wooden box. The box was flat and wide with eight rounded depressions along the edges of the width. The top of the box was worked with traceries of an intricate knot, each strand tucked into the fullness of the whole. The box was made of a tightly grained dark wood that had darkened to black with an uncounted number of hands and years. The box was locked with a clever mechanism that snapped shut and was only released when eight fingers pulled from each side, making the box impossible to open without two people.

When it arrived that October, the sky was the clearness of mountain lakes and a child’s laughter. The sun shone as if winter wasn’t lurking under the brilliant foliage. Only the squirrels acted as if anything other than an expanse of endless perfection lay ahead.

The package by the door hadn’t seemed unusual. There was nothing in the air that warned her. Things would have been different if she had known. After seventy-one arrivals, she would not have thought that it would be possible to break open the paper packing tape without her hands trembling with prescience. But they didn’t. She left the cardboard box on the counter in her studio while she cleaned her brushes with paint thinner and swept the pencil shavings off the floor.

It sat there, like it weighed no more than a box and necklace should, through the dinner she made with Ashely, their evening conversation, the furrowed brow of household bookkeeping, and ablutions of evening. She might have left it until the following day if she hadn’t stepped back in her studio to fetch her planner. With a shake of her head, she plopped her planner on the box and tucked the lot under her arm as she returned to her bedroom.

Hours later, after the horrified shock and gasping breaths, the necklace remained entombed in the box. She hadn’t needed to trip the lock or brush her fingers over the carvings to know that he had found her again.