Reached into her blouse.
And slipped the necklace into the front pocket.
My father stopped breathing.
At least that was how it looked.
His shoulders simply stopped moving.
My stepmother reached for the phone.
“That’s edited.”
I pulled it back.
“It’s not.”
“You’ve been recording me?”
“You were going through my bedroom.”
“That doesn’t give you the right—”
My father stepped between us.
His voice changed.
I had almost never heard that tone from him.
“You framed my daughter?”
My stepmother stared at him.
Nobody said anything for several seconds.
Then she lunged past him.
Her hand struck mine.
The phone flew across the room and landed on the couch.
Before I could react, she shoved me.
Hard.
My heel caught the edge of the rug.
The room tilted.
My father grabbed my shoulder before I fell against the coffee table.
He pushed me behind him.
“Do not touch her.”
My stepmother’s breathing had become shallow.
Her face was red.
“You want to defend her?”
“She just proved you planted stolen property in her bag.”
“You have no idea what she’s been doing.”
“I watched the video.”
“You watched fifteen seconds.”
“I watched enough.”
“No.”
She backed toward the side table.
“You haven’t watched enough.”
My father took one step toward her.
“Stop.”
Instead, she grabbed an old wedding album.
I recognized it immediately.
Heavy leather cover.
Dark green.
My father almost never opened it.
It had belonged to the years before I could remember.
The years when my mother was alive.
My stepmother carried it to the coffee table and threw it open.
Pages cracked against one another.
Old photographs shifted beneath their plastic coverings.
“What are you doing?” my father demanded.
She flipped through pages violently.
“Since we’re finally telling the truth…”
“Put that down.”
She stopped.
Her fingers slid beneath one photograph.
My father’s face changed.
“Don’t.”
That word was different.
Not angry.
Afraid.
My stepmother pulled the photograph free.
She let it fall.
It landed near my feet.
I looked down.
My father was younger.
Maybe twenty-five.
He stood beside an older dark-colored sedan with one arm resting across the roof.
My mother stood several feet behind him.
And beside my father was another Black man.
They looked similar enough that I noticed immediately.
Same eyes.
Same shape around the mouth.
The stranger was thinner, smiling broadly at the camera.
I had never seen him before.
My father looked down at the photograph.