The room was turned upside down. Ransacked.
My hand shot to my mouth. “Oh my God!”
The couch pillows were strewn everywhere, cushions from the couch upended. A framed photo of Brandon and me was knocked off a side table onto the floor. A painting on the wall hung crookedly, to the side. Jim and I used to collect antique Chinese ceramics, and I noticed that a Ming plate and a scalloped blue-and-white serving bowl were missing.
“Oh, Jesus, Brandon.”
Brandon’s eyes were wide as moons. And confused. “What’s happened, Mommy? Who did this?”
I looked around in a state of stunned deflation. “I don’t know. Stay here,” I said.
I went into the family room. It was the same in there. Total havoc. A row of books were flung onto the floor from a bookshelf, as if someone was systematically looking behind them.
For what, a wall safe, maybe?
Remi was barking crazily.
I suddenly grew nervous. A terrifying thought rose up in me. What if whoever did this was still in the house?
“Brandon, I want you to go back in the kitchen,” I said, pushing him in that direction. I hadn’t noticed a vehicle around, even on the street that led up to the house, but now, feeling a draft, I saw that the sliding glass door to the back deck was cracked open slightly. Maybe that was how they’d gotten in. I was praying they had left the same way. Living all the way out here, sometimes I didn’t lock it as I should. I listened carefully. I didn’t hear a sound. I’d read about the string of home robberies in Westchester, but they were all up in Mount Kisco or Chappaqua, far enough away. I never thought for a second that it would be me. I admonished myself for not putting on the alarm. I rarely did. Only if we were leaving town for a few days. And Armonk was one of the safest communities in the county.
“Mommy, who’s been in here?” Brandon said again, not heeding my request. I didn’t want to go any farther in the house with him around. “I want to see my—”
“Brandon, just go, please!” My heart started to pound. “Just listen to me this one time. Go back in the kitchen and stay there with Remi till I know what’s going on! Now!”
“Okay.” He headed back in and I stood there, not sure what my strategy was now.
The right thing, of course, would be to call the police. Take my son and get out. Before I took another step. But then I flashed to what I had under the deck, and I got nervous that the police might be the last people I wanted here right now. I didn’t hear a sound anywhere in the house. The deck door was ajar. I was starting to feel pretty certain that whoever had been in here was gone by now. I’d read about these break-ins. Mostly in affluent neighborhoods. I hadn’t heard that anyone had been hurt in one, or even confronted, so far. They were pros.
My mind flashed to the money hidden under the deck. I was pretty certain no one in a million years could possibly find that.
“Brandon, stay in there. If you hear anything, I want you to run. Run to Meg and Taylor’s.” Our closest neighbors. “Okay? I’m just taking a look around . . .”
His voice was responsive yet mildly disappointed. “Okay, Mommy . . .”
I didn’t care.
I went down the first-floor hall and into the guest bedroom I used as my office.
Christ . . . My stomach plummeted.
My desk drawers were all pulled open and rifled through, files strewn about, a locked filing drawer where I kept our passports and insurance policies jimmied open. An identify thief’s dream. I kneeled down. I was shocked to find my passport was still there. And my checkbook was still on my desk, where I’d written one to Elena a few hours earlier. Then I remembered how burglars didn’t go for things like that, things that could tie them to a particular location. What they wanted were things of value they could pawn or sell quickly without a trace. My computer was a four-year-old Apple, not exactly state of the art. They’d left it. Maybe I’d gotten off lucky.
That was when my mind flashed to my ring.
My engagement ring. Not that the sentiment behind it meant anything now, but it was still about the most valuable thing I owned. Close to four karats and really good quality. Jim had sprung for it after he sold a big home. I still wore it every once in a while. In fact, I’d had it on yesterday for my job interview. I usually locked it away in my safe upstairs, but I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t done that yesterday. I’d just tossed it in the change dish on my dresser.
In plain view.
Shit. A burglar in his first day on the job couldn’t have missed it.
“Brandon, I’m going upstairs,” I yelled. “Just stay in there till you hear me call.”
He didn’t answer.
“Did you hear me, Brandon? Please answer me. I just want you to say okay.”
“Mommy, okay . . . ,” he called back, irritated.
I headed up the stairs, Remi following me, my heart ricocheting back and forth against my ribs.
I figured if anyone was up there I would have heard the creaking of the floor by now. I had most of my valuables here: pearls my mother had given me that had come from her mother; a gold and diamond Roberto Coin bracelet that was an anniversary present. The Cartier Ballon Bleu watch I’d sprung for myself a few years back. I was certain they had to be history now. A part of me was angry to have been so unlucky. Another part was even angrier that I hadn’t turned on the alarm.
A last part was still wrestling with the thought that someone might still be in the house. And I was walking right into it. What then?
I went along the bridge that connected the stairs to my bedroom wing and paused at the doorway. My heart still, I listened for any sign of movement.
Nothing.
“If anyone’s in here, please, just get the fuck out!” I yelled. “Please . . .” Knowing that didn’t exactly sound threatening.
Nothing came back.
My nerves buzzing, I stepped inside my bedroom. I expected the same scene as downstairs. Drawers open. Things ripped apart. The contents flung everywhere.
But it wasn’t.
The bed was still made, my clothes, the things on my night table just as I’d left them a few hours earlier. Amazingly, everything seemed to be okay.
Maybe I’d come home and surprised whoever it was before they’d had a chance to get up here. Maybe they’d run out the back just as we arrived. That was why the door was left cracked open. That gave me a creepy feeling as well.
I stepped inside the master closet. It was large, like an airplane hangar, I always joked—one of Jim’s big selling points: the fancy master suite, with its built-in dresser drawers and a tower of shoe shelves Imelda Marcos would have gushed over.
The dresser drawers were open—but I was pretty sure, open as I had left them. Everything seemed to be in place. My jewelry box was there as well. Open. But after a quick inspection, everything seemed to be there. I saw my watch, my pearls. I let out a huge sigh of relief.
My ring?
I went over to my dresser and I saw it. Not in the dish where I was pretty sure I had left it. But right there on the dresser top.
Staring up at me.
“Thank God!” I blew out my cheeks. It definitely looked as if no one had been up here.
For the first time since I’d come home I allowed myself to relax. I went to pick it up, thanking my lucky stars.
That was when I noticed something else, sitting directly under it, in plain view, and the elation I was feeling rushed out of me like water down a drain. In its place I felt an icy stab of fear.
My eyes fixed on the spot where I had found it. Not in the change dish, but on the dresser.
Sitting there for anyone to see.
And a face was smiling up at me, one I’d seen a lot these past ten days.
Ben Franklin’s face.
My ring was sitting on a crisp new hundred-dollar bill.