The storage unit in Weehawken, New Jersey, was five by ten feet. Gemma booked it online, and it was clear as soon as she looked inside that it wasn’t large enough to fit her workbench, tools, and supplies.
“You can’t take this stuff with you to your next apartment?” Sanjay said, surveying the situation alongside of her. She’d enlisted him at the last minute for help driving the U-Haul.
“Considering my budget, I’ll be lucky to find a room to rent that fits my bed.” The way things were looking, she might have to start living in the storage space.
“Okay, let’s do this,” he said.
They staged all the boxes outside the storage unit, arranging them by size before positioning them carefully inside. Sanjay made sure all the labels were facing out so she could find things when she needed them. Gemma was creative and hardworking, but spatial organization had never been a strength of hers, so she let Sanjay take the lead. While he took care of some of the heavier metalworking equipment, she bent down and checked the boxes labeled Photos and Press, sealing them with an extra layer of packing tape. They contained the things she was most reluctant to leave behind: photo albums, newspaper clippings, and magazines featuring her mother.
The mementos started arriving by mail four years ago. The first package was an old-fashioned leather photo album, the type where photos were arranged four at a time on a page and held in place by sticky plastic sheets. The spine was embossed with 1980–1981 in gold lettering. Every picture was of the Pavlin sisters, or the sisters with their parents. The package didn’t include a personal note of any kind, but the return address was Park Avenue—the sender: her maternal grandmother, Constance. Over the next year, seven more packages arrived, some photo albums, some meticulous scrapbooks. Every time she found one waiting inside the vestibule of her apartment building, she was tempted to try to contact Constance. But loyalty to Anne Maybrook, knowing her wishes where this was concerned, kept her from reaching out. Two years after the first package arrived, she saw the New York Times headline announcing Constance Pavlin’s death. The realization that she was too late, that she’d hesitated too long, took her breath away.
Her phone rang with an unfamiliar number. She had the impulse to send it to voicemail, but considering she was simultaneously looking for an apartment, a lead for financing her business, and a part-time job, she was in no position to ignore her phone.
“Hello?” she said, glancing at Sanjay. He seemed to be fitting the last of the larger boxes into the space and gave her a thumbs-up.
“Gemma,” the voice said on the other end. “It’s Elodie Pavlin. We need to talk.”
She stood up, walking a few paces away. Her heart began to race.
“I’m listening,” Gemma said coolly, still feeling the sting of their confrontation at the party. She hated to admit it, but deep down, she’d had a fantasy that the estrangement had ultimately been in her imagination; her mother’s sisters had actually tried to be in touch with her but simply couldn’t find her (a scenario that she knew was more plausible before the internet had been invented). Still, in her weaker moments, she imagined she’d cross the threshold of Pavlin & Co, and her aunt would spot her, and like in a film they’d run toward each other in slow motion and Elodie would say, “I’ve been waiting for this day. We all have.”
“I spoke to my sister—your aunt Celeste—and it seems she might have an idea where the pink diamond can be located.”
Gemma didn’t know much about her mother’s oldest sister. The photo albums included snapshots of all three girls. She could always identify her mother, the youngest. But her two aunts looked alike: long-limbed preteens with shoulder-length bobs, dressed in the preppy fashion of Manhattan’s upper class circa the 1970s: pleated skirts, pearls, and penny loafers. The one difference she was certain of was that the oldest had never worked for Pavlin & Co. Out of all the Pavlin relations that haunted her dreams and fantasies, Gemma had always given Celeste the least amount of thought.
Why would Celeste know the whereabouts of the Electric Rose, and not Elodie?
“Does she have it?” Gemma said quickly. She felt like someone on the phone with a kidnapper waiting to hear the ransom, like the caller might end the call at any moment and leave her hanging.
“I think you should go and talk to her yourself. In person,” Elodie said.
Gemma didn’t know why Elodie suddenly had a change of heart, but she couldn’t worry about that now. After the discouraging conversation with Sloan Pierce, she was willing to follow any lead.
“Okay,” Gemma said. “Where can I find her?”
“Provincetown,” said Elodie. “Provincetown, Cape Cod.”