“Weird,” I said.
“Huh.” Leo reached for the remote to start up the play again but then he set it down. He frowned and scooted closer to the screen. I noticed, not for the first time, that even though his hair was very thick there were always a few strands sticking up in the back, a cowlick. It made me think of Ben.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Leo.
“This ring thing is really weird,” Leo said. “So. She’s wearing the ring the night she died. But it’s not listed with the items that were found in her room with her the next morning. She wasn’t wearing it then.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Almost positive,” Leo said. He ran out of the room and came back with some papers. “It’s in the copy I made of the police report.”
“Maybe they wrote down ring and weren’t specific,” I said.
“No,” he said. “They mention a necklace and earrings. A suitcase and the contents. Shoes. Nylons. Clothing. All of that. But no ring.”
I held out my hand. Leo hesitated. But I took it from him and read the list. I didn’t let my eyes wander to anything else on the report.
“They were really thorough,” I said.
“They were probably worried because they couldn’t tell right off how she died. Plus she was famous. They wanted to do a good job.”
The ring on the screen was the same one that was in her portrait. I was sure of it. Plain gold band, three pale stones.
“Rings don’t fall off,” I said. “Earrings, yeah. All the time. And necklaces, maybe. If the clasp breaks. But not rings. Not if they fit right. And I bet hers did. I mean, she’d worn it for all that time when she was married.”
“Weird,” Leo said. “All of it. Why was she wearing it that night? Where did it go?”
“Maybe she hid it,” I said.
“But why would she hide it?” Leo asked. “She had a heart attack. She didn’t know she was going to die.”
“Maybe she gave it to one of the people who came to see her at the hotel,” I said.
“Roger Marin,” Leo said.
“Right.”
“But why would she give it back?” Leo asked. “If she’d kept it that whole time.”
It didn’t seem likely to me either. If she cared about it enough to keep wearing it, she wouldn’t hand it over to her ex-husband. And my mom still wore the rings my dad had given her, the diamond engagement ring and the wedding band. Of course, she and my dad hadn’t gotten divorced. He died.
But maybe getting divorced didn’t mean you stopped loving someone either.
“Lisette could also have given the ring to the first person who came to visit her at the hotel,” I pointed out. “The person before Roger Marin.”
“Maybe,” Leo said. “But it’s not very likely. In the police report the hotel maid said she came up around that time with some fresh towels that Lisette wanted. So the maid thinks she was the first person.”
“It’s all pretty interesting,” I admitted.
“I know,” Leo said.
15.
At the end of the play I cried.
Because Lisette Chamberlain was dead?
Yes.
For the first time, she felt real to me. The play had made her real.
And I cried because of other things.
At the end Miranda’s dad, Prospero, talked about how our lives are little. How they’re rounded out with a sleep. And then, at the very end of the play, he was by himself. The audience was all, all around him, watching him, but he was alone on the stage and he walked off alone.
It was like he was saying good-bye to us. To the world.
“Sorry,” Leo said when he noticed me crying. “Are you okay?”
“The ending is sad,” I said. “How it’s about dying.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. He sounded uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.” His mouth went down and his eyes went sad. I could tell that he felt bad for me.
But he didn’t look away from me the way most people do when they say I’m sorry. I felt like I could say I’m okay or I could say something else. I felt like Leo was waiting for whatever came next.
“My brother used to like to go on drives,” I said. I’m not sure why. It’s what came out, what I guess I was thinking about. “Sometimes he wanted my mom or dad to take him alone and sometimes he wanted the whole family to come. We’d get in the car and back out of the driveway. He would say left, right, left. You weren’t ever sure where he was going to take you but he wasn’t doing it at random. He knew exactly where he wanted to go. Sometimes past the police station, or his school, stuff that made sense. Sometimes he’d have us drive past places I’d never even noticed, down streets I’d never wondered about, and then we’d come home a new way. He always knew how to get back.”
“Did the accident happen on one of those drives?” Leo asked.