Chapter 4 - THE COAT
Julian stared at the silver pocket watch dangling from my father’s trembling fingers as if it were a venomous snake.
"That's a lie," Julian spat, though his voice shook. He snatched the watch back, shoving it deep into his pocket. "My father, Richard, was a good man. He gave me this watch on his deathbed. He would never strike a man from behind."
"He struck me," my father murmured, clutching his head as if the memory itself brought physical pain. He stumbled backward, sitting heavily onto the edge of the closed toilet seat. "It was raining. A construction site. Not a warehouse fire. It was open sky... mud... and the ticking."
"Stop making things up!" Julian shouted, his charitable facade entirely shattered. "You're a thief trying to cover your tracks because you suddenly realized whose house you're in!"
"Julian, enough!" I pushed my husband back toward the door. "Can't you see he's in pain? He’s remembering!"
"He's acting, Mariana! God, how can you be so blind? He realizes he's trapped, so he's inventing a story where my father is the villain to manipulate you!" Julian glared at me, his chest heaving. "I'm going downstairs to call my mother. She was there when all of this happened. She'll know what to do."
"If you call the police, Julian, I will pack my bags and leave this house tonight," I threatened, the words pouring out of me with terrifying certainty.
Julian stopped in the doorway. He looked at me, truly looked at me, as if seeing a stranger.
"You would throw away our fifteen-year marriage for a vagrant you just met?"
"He is my father."
Julian’s jaw tightened. "I'm calling my mother." He turned and marched down the hallway.
I locked the bathroom door behind him.
My heart was hammering against my ribs. I turned back to my father. He was holding his head in his hands, rocking slightly.
"Dad?" I whispered the word for the first time in twenty years. It felt foreign on my tongue. "Elias? Are you okay?"
"It hurts," he groaned. "The flashes... they don't make sense. I see a woman. Crying. I see a briefcase."
"It's okay. We don't have to push it," I soothed, rushing to the linen closet. I pulled out a pair of Julian’s expensive sweatpants and a soft cotton t-shirt. "Here. Put these on. You need to be warm."
As he shakily dressed, my eyes drifted to the corner of the bathroom.
The black plastic trash bag.
When we first came upstairs, I had forced him to take off his filthy, rotting layers of clothing and shove them into that bag.
If my father had been wandering for twenty years, he had nothing. But what if he had something from before? What if something had survived in his pockets all these years?
Disgust forgotten, I knelt beside the trash bag and opened it. The stench of stale sweat, damp wool, and city grime hit me like a wall. I held my breath and pulled out the heavy, oversized olive-green winter coat he had been wearing. The fabric was stiff with dirt.
I plunged my hands into the deep front pockets.
Empty.
I checked the inner breast pocket. There was a tear in the lining.
My fingers slipped through the hole, feeling around the dark, dusty hem of the coat.
My fingers brushed against something hard and cold. Metal.
I frowned, working the object back up through the torn lining.
It was heavy. I pulled it free and sat back on my heels, staring at the object in my palm.
It was a thick, intricately woven silver bracelet. It was heavily tarnished, black with age and neglect, but the craftsmanship was unmistakable. In the center, a large, teardrop-shaped emerald caught the bathroom light, glowing fiercely despite the dirt.
"Where did you get this?" I gasped.
My father looked up, adjusting the oversized t-shirt. He squinted at the bracelet.
"I don't know," he said softly. "It was in the coat when I woke up in the mud twenty years ago. I kept it hidden. I always thought... maybe it belonged to my wife. To someone I loved. I never sold it, even when I was starving."
Tears pricked my eyes at his tragic loyalty. He had starved on the streets, clutching a piece of jewelry he thought belonged to my mother.
But it didn't belong to my mother.
I knew this bracelet.
I had seen it in dozens of old family photographs scattered around Julian’s childhood home.
It was a custom-made piece from a jeweler in Paris.
"Elias," I said, my voice trembling as the horrifying realization set in. "This didn't belong to your wife."
I stood up, holding the emerald to the light.
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"This belongs to Julian’s mother. Beatrice."
Why would my father have Beatrice Sterling’s custom emerald bracelet sewn into his coat on the night he was supposedly struck from behind by her husband?
