Chapter 1 - The Moon Around Her Neck
"Where did you get that necklace?"
Naomi Ellis stopped with a stack of dinner plates balanced against her hip.
The question had come from the elderly woman seated at the head of the table.
Evelyn Whitmore, seventy-two, was one of the most respected women in Manhattan's philanthropic circles. She wore a dark emerald dress, pearl earrings, and a silver bracelet that caught the chandelier light whenever she moved.
Until that moment, she had barely spoken to the catering staff.
Now she was staring at Naomi as though she'd seen a ghost.
"I'm sorry, ma'am?"
"Your necklace."
Evelyn's hand trembled as she pointed toward the small silver moon resting against Naomi's black uniform.
"Where did you get it?"
Naomi instinctively touched the pendant.
"My foster mother gave it to me."
Evelyn pushed her chair backward.
The movement startled several guests.
"May I see it?"
Naomi hesitated.
She had worked enough private dinners to recognize when a guest was behaving strangely. Normally, she would have politely excused herself and told the catering supervisor.
But something about the woman's expression stopped her.
Evelyn wasn't angry.
She looked terrified.
Naomi leaned forward.
The elderly woman opened the little moon-shaped pendant with fingers that could barely keep still.
Inside, beneath a faded blue lining, were four engraved words.
"To Clara, from Mom."
Evelyn made a sound so small that only Naomi heard it.
"Oh, God."
The champagne conversation around the table faded.
Evelyn stared at the inscription.
"I had this made," she whispered.
Naomi frowned.
"I'm sorry?"
"For my daughter's fifth birthday."
A man seated beside Evelyn reached toward her.
"Mother, what's wrong?"
But Evelyn wasn't looking at him.
Her eyes had moved toward Naomi's left arm.
"Please," she said. "Your sleeve."
Naomi instinctively stepped back.
"What about it?"
Evelyn reached forward, caught the edge of Naomi's sleeve, and pulled it upward.
A long, uneven scar curved across Naomi's forearm.
For several seconds, Evelyn stopped breathing.
Then tears spilled down her cheeks.
"My daughter had that scar."
Naomi stared at her.
"Ma'am, I don't understand."
"She fell through the glass door of our greenhouse when she was four. I held her while they stitched her arm."
Evelyn released the sleeve immediately.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have touched you like that."
She pressed one hand over her mouth.
"But I remember every inch of that scar."
The man beside her stood.
His name was Julian Whitmore, Evelyn's forty-eight-year-old son.
"Mother, sit down."
"No, Julian."
Her voice cracked.
"Go into my study. The photograph on my desk. Bring it here."
Julian looked uncertain.
"Mother—"
"Please."
Something in her expression sent him walking toward the hallway.
Naomi remained beside the table.
Her heart was pounding.
She had worn the necklace for fifteen years.
Ruth Ellis, the woman who raised her, had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday.
Ruth told her it had belonged to her before they met.
Naomi had always known the name Clara was engraved inside.
But Ruth said it was simply a name from a life that had ended.
A mother who couldn't keep her.
A past better left alone.
Julian returned carrying an old silver-framed photograph.
Evelyn took it with both hands.
The picture showed a smiling little girl in a yellow dress standing beside a greenhouse.
Her left arm was raised.
And there, clearly visible beneath her short sleeve, was a long scar.
Naomi felt the room tilt.
The little girl's wide brown eyes looked like her own childhood photographs.
The scar was in precisely the same place.
Evelyn touched the girl's face through the glass.
"Her name was Clara."
She looked up at Naomi.
"She disappeared twenty-six years ago."
Someone at the table gasped.
Julian stared at the photograph.
"Mother, we don't know who this woman is."
Evelyn didn't answer.
Her attention was fixed on Naomi.
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-one."
"And your birthday?"
"May seventeenth."
Evelyn closed her eyes.
"Clara was born on May seventeenth."
Naomi stepped backward until her hip struck the serving cart.
She suddenly remembered being seven years old, asking Ruth why she couldn't find any baby pictures of herself.
Ruth had said their old apartment flooded.
Everything had been destroyed.
Naomi had accepted the answer.
Children usually believe the person who tucks them into bed.
Now she looked at the silver moon resting against her chest.
"My mother died when I was little," she whispered.
Evelyn's face crumpled.
"No, sweetheart."
She took one unsteady step forward.
"If you're who I think you are, your mother never died."
Naomi could barely form the question.
"Then where was she?"
Evelyn looked at the old photograph.
May you like
"Looking for you."
And for the first time in her life, Naomi wondered whether the woman who had raised her had lied about the one thing every child deserved to know.
