He turned to her.
“Sheila, don’t—”
“You told me you and your wife were separated. Two years. You said she’d moved into the guest room, and you only stayed for the kids.”
“Sheila.”
She looked at me across ten feet of dark wood floor.
For the first time that night, she looked like what she actually was, thirty-one years old, and wrecked.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Hendricks,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”
“Did you ask?” I said.
She flinched.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t.”
“Neither did I.”
She reached behind her neck, slowly, and unclasped the necklace.
She laid it on top of the bronze nameplate, in the box, between the rubber gloves and the feather duster.
A little robin’s-egg-blue heart in a pile of cleaning supplies.
“Please give this to the company,” she told Priya. “I’ll come in Monday and tell HR everything. Whatever they need.”
Then she walked out, fast, through the double doors.
