Patricia Lyle looked at me over the dessert table of the wedding reception in Lexington with her fingers still resting on the clasp of the necklace of my grandmother, and she said very quietly that I must ask my husband. I am Evelyn Rhodes, seventy years old, of Danville, and I turned and found Frank standing ten feet away with a cup of punch in his hand. He had heard every word. His face was the color of the white tablecloth. He set the cup down, as carefully as a man setting down a live coal, and he said, “Evelyn, let us go outside.”
We walked out onto the terrace of the country club, under the strings of white lights, with the music of the band floating through the open doors. Frank leaned on the stone railing, and for a full minute he said nothing. Then he told me, in a voice I did not know, that there had been no burglary in 2019. He had taken the necklace from the jewelry box himself, in the night, and sold it to a dealer in Louisville for eleven thousand dollars. He had broken the lock on the window to make it look like a robbery.
I sat down on a stone bench. The insurance company had paid me thirty eight thousand dollars, and I had spent it on the roof and the furnace. I had wept for months over the loss of the necklace of my grandmother, and the man I had married forty seven years earlier had held me while I wept, knowing all the time that he had done it. I looked at the lawn rolling away into the dark, and I thought, with great clarity, that I would never in my life be able to tell him how deeply that had cut.
A diamond necklace worn down a wedding aisle gave one grandmother the length of a reception to bring her husband back to the truth in Lexington.
I gave my terms in the dim light of that terrace, speaking quietly so the guests would not hear. “Frank, you will tell the insurance company the truth on Monday. You will repay the thirty eight thousand dollars, and you will tell them about the dealer in Louisville. You will buy back the necklace from Patricia for exactly what she paid, and the rest of your life will be spent making amends. Tonight we will go in and dance at the wedding of our daughter. And after that, we shall see whether there is a marriage.”
Frank bowed his head. “Evelyn, I owed forty thousand dollars on a bad business deal,” he said, brokenly. “I played poker in a back room in Lexington for two years and told myself I would win it back. I could not bear to tell you that I had lost your savings. When I saw the necklace in your jewelry box, I thought it was a thing that could be replaced. I did not think about what it was.” He was weeping openly. “I have regretted it every day. I would give every year I have left to take it back.”
But the reception was loud and bright, and in the doorway stood a man Frank had not seen in years, his old poker partner, a thick fellow named Dutch, in a rented tuxedo, who had come as a guest of the groom. Dutch saw the two of us at the railing and understood at once. He suddenly strode forward, snatched the velvet pouch from the pocket of Frank, the one containing the receipt from the dealer, and bolted down the terrace steps toward the parking lot, meaning to throw it in the pond.
Dutch stopped halfway across the lawn with the receipt in his fist, beneath the strings of white lights, as the groom and three of his brothers appeared on the steps of the terrace in their dress suits, forming a line across the grass. Behind them came Patricia Lyle, in her champagne gown, with the necklace in her hand. She spoke quietly. “Mr. Rhodes, I paid fifteen thousand dollars for this necklace to a jeweler who told me it was a family piece. I would like to return it to its owner. Hand me that receipt.”
The consequences were hard and healing. Patricia insisted on returning the necklace at no cost, saying that she would rather have a clear conscience than a diamond. Frank went to the insurance company on Monday and made a full confession, and because of his age and his honesty, he was permitted to repay the thirty eight thousand dollars over five years instead of facing charges. He went to meetings for gamblers every Tuesday night. I wore the necklace to the church on Easter, and a small white card told the story.
In the name of my grandmother Odessa, who passed in 1989, I started the Odessa Rhodes Fund. It pays for jewelry and heirloom appraisals and recovery help for families who have lost family treasures, and for counseling for couples recovering from betrayal and addiction, in Boyle, Mercer and Garrard counties. In the first year we helped sixty seven families recover heirlooms and counseled one hundred and ten couples. One was a seventy two year old woman from Harrodsburg who held a recovered brooch in her palm, and told us it was the only thing she had of her mother.
On a warm Saturday in June, I stood in my garden in Danville in a straw hat, with a pair of shears in my hand, cutting roses for the supper table. Frank came across the lawn from the porch, thinner and quieter than he had been, carrying a pitcher of lemonade. Around my neck hung the necklace of seventeen diamonds, with the one empty prong on the clasp. Frank touched it lightly, and his eyes filled. “Evelyn,” he said, “it was always yours.” I took the lemonade, and I let him sit beside me for the rest of the afternoon.
