The Charm Bracelet (11 page)

She smiled indulgently at him. ‘You mean you only just noticed?’

‘Let’s go out, can we Mom, please?’ He pushed his face against the cold glass of the window. ‘Maybe there won't be any school tomorrow?’

‘Not with that light dusting.’ Holly gulped down the rest of her coffee and got dressed – no use torturing him.

Besides, she wanted to try and see if she could make it over to Tiffany’s today. It was near enough to Columbus Circle, so they could take a quick walk through the park while they were there. When she got out of the bathroom he was waiting by the door, dressed and ready to go. He took her coat off the hook, and pointed to her boots on the floor. ‘Here you go.’

‘Are you a golden retriever now?' she joked, shaking her head indulgently as she slipped on her coat and got into her warmest walking boots.

When they got out onto the street it was wonderfully calm and quiet – a world away from the usual weekday hustle and bustle. She looked at the snow softy falling on cars and lying undisturbed on the ground. Soon the paths would be a slushy mess and most of the young people in the neighbourhood would have missed it. But the snow definitely wasn’t wasted on Danny.

He was trying to catch flakes on his tongue as they walked. Holly threw her arm around him. How could she not be the happiest woman in the world? Danny's shoulder felt bony and muscular at the same time, the shoulder of a boy on the verge of becoming a teen. Not long now, she thought sadly, until he tried to pull away from me. Would it be harder or easier than it was for her and her mother?

Holly recalled the day her mother, during one of their infamous arguments, had blurted out the news that had shattered her heart. She’d just turned sixteen. Overcome by teenage hormones, Holly had been complaining resentfully that her mother was continuously on her case.

‘It’
s like you wish I’d never been born!’

‘More like I wish I’d picked out a more grateful child
at the adoption agency!’ Eileen shot back, before putting her hands to her mouth, horrified.

The words had washed over Holly
like a tsunami of betrayal, fear and anger. Adopted? Impossible!

Everyone was always commenting that she was petite like her mother, and looked like her dad. Was it all lies? Everything? Maybe she wasn't smart and pretty either, or creative, or interesting or fun …

Her world had ended on that day. It was like the Holly she knew had died, or was erased, non-existent …

The memory made her squeeze Danny's shoulder tighter, who in turn wiggled away from her grasp. He jogged ahead of her, sweeping snow off cars as he went to make snowballs and threw one at a passing crosstown bus. As she watched him, Holly tried to remember herself at that age: carefree, with two parents at home who loved her.

How that had all changed when Eileen had
gone on to admit the awful truth.

Holly had
stared at the women across from her, the woman she had called Mom all those years. It was as if she’d suddenly been given a pair of glasses that completely altered her vision. Instead she saw Eileen as separate from her: small and dowdy, with a bad haircut and poorly outlined lipstick.

‘I'm … not your child?’ Holly
screamed, hysterical

Eileen grabbed her hands and Holly snatched them away. The blood drained from
her mother’s face. ‘I’m so, so, sorry, I never meant you to find out like this. Your dad and I had planned to sit down together one day and … ’ She trailed off.

‘
When? When were you going to tell me that I’m not your daughter?’ Holly started to cry and was angry with herself for it. She swatted a tear away as if it were a fly.

‘Oh Holly, you
are
my daughter, you were sent to us – me and your Dad … ’ Eileen reached for her again and Holly stood up from the table, knocking the chair back.

‘
Maybe some day you might want to find her – maybe when you had children of your own ...’ her mother continued pleadingly.

‘Children of my own?’ Holly spat at her. ‘I'm
sixteen? What – you think I am going to follow in her footsteps and get knocked up?’ she hissed, assuming that was what had happened with her real mother. Her real mother … it was all so horribly surreal.

‘
Holly ...’ Eileen pleaded

But Holly did not hear her; she was gone, leaving the house in a whirl, running down the stairs and out into the street. She started walking and had found herself in front of the hardware store. Her beloved dad was behind the counter, ringing up a can of paint for a young man in tight pants. When she entered the young man grimaced at her lewdly.

‘Hi sweetheart,’ her father said calmly, leaning his full weight on his hands on the counter. Looking the young man square in the eye he said, ‘Couldn't be luckier, having a daughter who likes to stop by to help her poor old father.’

But poor and old were the last words Holly would have used to describe her father that day. He stood about six feet two and was built like a large square, with broad shoulders and a long jaw. He pushed the can of paint across the counter to the now nervous-looking young man. ‘Enjoy!’ he said cheerily as the guy scampered out through the door.

When the door shut, Holly burst into tears. The next thing she felt was her father’s large, solid arms around her and him saying: ‘Shh, it can't be that bad, you haven’t got a worry in the world.’

When she finally calmed herself
enough to tell him what had happened, he switched the door sign to ‘Closed’ and gave her a cup of coffee with a dab of whiskey in it, his Irish coffee special for bad days, he called it.

‘Do you know where I came from?’ he had asked her, very seriously. ‘Do you, Holly?’

She had shrugged in her impartial teenage way and waited for him to tell her, but he had just kept asking her questions.

‘Where was I born?’

‘In Ireland, Dad,’ she had sighed.

‘Yeah, but where?’ he insisted.

Holly paid attention now. ‘Your mother’s bed, in the Liberties.’ She had no idea where that was or what kind of a place it was, but it sounded like a good place for a childhood, carefree.

‘Yeah,’ he nodded sadly. ‘I was born to a woman who wanted another baby like she wanted a hole in the head. My older sister had sat out on the front step with her ears covered as my mother screamed her agony to the whole world,’

Holly looked at him. She knew the story about him being born at home, but he had never said he wasn't wanted. He had come from a large Irish Catholic family, where lots of children were inevitable – no one complained about it.

He pulled her closer. ‘Holly, my mother had me and barely looked at me, hardly said two words to me my whole life with her, which was only up to the age of fifteen.’ Holly had heard this story too, but in her mind she assumed he had left for
New York at such a young age because he had just been wild and rebellious.

‘You know when I left for the boat to
America, all my mum said was, “good luck.” She didn't even say my name. I think the whole time I was in the Liberties with my family, I never heard my mother say my name once.’

‘Oh, Dad,’ Holly hugged him back, suddenly tired of knowing more than her years.

‘All I'm trying to say,’ he added, squeezing her tightly, ‘is that we are all born – that’s the easy part. It's being loved and wanted that's tricky.’

Now, walking the snowy streets of New York, Holly watched her son, who ran ahead of her, then waited, then broke away from her again, like a colt experimenting with leaving its mother. She kept a steady pace, letting him be free and return as much as he wanted. There was no question that Danny was wanted and very much loved, at least by her.

They reached Twenty-Third Street, where the crowds were beginning to come out on the hunt for coffee, papers and fresh-baked goods. Danny's pace had slowed from a boisterous snowball pitcher to a shivering eleven year old. She linked his arm through hers. ‘Let’s take the crosstown bus to Madison and then catch the uptown?’

He nodded and took her arm. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Well,’ she said with an enigmatic smile, knowing this would appeal to his imagination, ‘we are going to solve a mystery.’

When the bus got near enough to walk to
Fifth Avenue, the two of them hopped out and started to walk to Tiffany's.

When they got there, Holly paused to look in the windows and admire the wonderfully elaborate displays.

‘So we’re going to a jewellery store,’ Danny said flatly.

She punched him in the shoulder, ‘Yep, but I know a great movie theatre near by that might be playing … the Marx brothers.’

‘Really? YES!’ Danny did a goofy happy dance on the sidewalk.

Holly pushed him towards the entrance, ‘But here first, OK?’

They passed the swarms of tourists posing for pictures in front of the iconic store sign, and found refuge inside the swirling doors that led to the main ground-floor jewellery hall.

They walked past the opening display cases that showcased a variety of glittering jewels, and Holly quickly sought out a quiet area towards the rear, leaving Danny to wander around at his leisure. She caught the eye of a pleasant-looking salesman and smiled brightly.

‘Hello, I was wondering if you could help me?’

‘Of course, Madam, what can I do for you?’ he smiled, and she saw him surreptitiously take in her vintage Chanel handbag and chic, expensive-looking waffle-weave jacke
t
somewhat different to the majority of the ‘I ♥ New York’ type tourists in the store just then.

Holly took a deep breath and pulled the charm bracelet from her pocket. ‘Actually, I was hoping to show you something. I found this bracelet … ’

She quickly recounted the story. ‘It’s just so important that I get this back to the rightful owner. I know I would be missing it terribly, if it were mine. See this heart-shaped key charm here – it has a Tiffany’s mark on it. Do you think you could tell me a little bit more about it? Something that might perhaps help me trace the owner?’

The man, whose name badge read ‘Samuel’, looked closer, inspecting the charm. ‘Well, you are right, it is one of ours –
a Tiffany key

possibly one of our most popular lines,’ he added, with a smile. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘this charm is produced en masse, so I doubt you could trace it back to the owner.’ He turned to his computer and quickly started pressing buttons. ‘There are hundreds of thousands of these sold worldwide – over a hundred thousand here in New York alone.’

‘One hundred thousand … ’ she said, crestfallen. ‘So there’s just no way records would be kept on … ’ She trailed off, and gave Samuel a bleak smile. ‘Oh well, I thought that this would be the place to start, but maybe I was wrong. I guess it’s back to square one. Thanks for the information.’

‘Actually, could I see the bracelet again?’

‘Sure,’ said Holly, putting it back down on the display case.

Samuel took the piece with his long fingers and flipped through the charms, before stopping on one. He turned it over in his hands several times, before going behind the counter to take out a jeweller’s loupe. Inspecting it through the monocle-like piece, he nodded, as if confirming something to himself.

‘This one here –’ he held up a gem-encrusted egg wrapped in a gold-coloured ribbon – ‘is rather distinctive in its craftsmanship.’

‘OK … ’ Holly’s face brightened.

‘It’s an expensive piece, made from
gold and diamonds. The workmanship is quite exquisite actually.’

Holly tried to stop her jaw from falling to the floor.
Gold and diamonds? She looked at the egg, which to her untrained eye looked no different to the ones on her own bracelet – little trinkets really. To think that she’d been carrying around a bracelet, with a teeny tiny charm on it that could be so valuable …

‘Oh my goodness! Are you sure?’

He nodded. ‘Definitely. Sadly, as it’s not a Tiffany’s creation, and as I can’t identify the maker’s mark, I suspect you’ll need to take your search elsewhere, perhaps to one of our … competitors.’ He said this as if there was something bad in his mouth.

Holly looked at the charm, trying to figure out where it might have come from – Cartier, Harry Winston maybe … She thought about the multitude of luxury jewellery stores in the city
– or on Fifth Avenue alone. Surely they’d keep records of such an expensive purchase?

‘You’re sure you don’t recognise the maker’s mark?’ she asked Samuel.

‘I’m afraid not. It could well be a bespoke piece, and very distinctive – which, on the plus side, should make tracing the owner that bit easier.’

‘Thank you again,’ Holly said, her mind awhirl with this new information. ‘You’ve helped a lot, in any case. At least now I know to be more careful when carrying this thing around. Who knows how much the whole lot is worth?’

Samuel seemed to be wrestling with something and eventually he spoke again.

‘Actually, I do know of someone who might be able to help you – help trace the origin of the egg-charm, in any case.’