My hands were shaking so hard I could barely pick up the pearls. Some had rolled under the coffee table. One cord had been sliced clean through. I remember staring at that cut and thinking, stupidly, Somebody used scissors.
Then I heard Tiffany behind me.
She laughed.
Not nervous laughter. Not shocked laughter. Real laughter.
I knew. Immediately.
“Guess old things fall apart,” she said. Then she looked right at me. “Just like your grandma.”
I turned so fast I almost slipped.
There were scissors sticking out of her back pocket.
I knew. Immediately. Completely. No doubt.
“You did this.”
She lifted one shoulder. “Maybe if you didn’t act like you were the star of some grief pageant all the time, people wouldn’t get so sick of it.”
My dad came in right after that.
I stood up. “You psycho.”
She smiled. “What are you going to do? Tell your dad?”
Our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Kim, knocked then and called through the open front door because she had heard us yelling. She looked from me to the floor to Tiffany’s hand.
“Oh my God,” she said.
My dad came in right after that. He looked from me to the pearls to Tiffany.
“What happened?”
