On Valentine's Day, gold prices surged and housing prices plummeted.
I talked it over with my husband. I wanted to sell all my gold jewelry, and combined with the money we'd scraped together over the past few years, it would be just enough to afford a bigger place.
My husband wouldn't hear of it.
He looked at me with a tenderness laced with guilt. "You've been with me all these years, suffering through every hardship by my side. I already feel terrible that I haven't been able to give you a better life. How could I let you sell your jewelry?"
"Babe, I promise. Give me a few more years. I'll work hard, I'll earn enough for a bigger house, and I'll make sure you live the life you deserve."
That same afternoon, a woman walked into the jewelry store where I worked, looking to sell gold.
And the pieces she brought in were identical to mine.
……
I stood behind the counter, staring at the jewelry this elegantly dressed woman had laid out, and my mind went blank for a moment.
The gold bracelet, the necklace, the ring. Every single piece matched mine in design.
Even the two bracelets had the same slight warping in the same spots.
When she noticed me staring, the woman rapped her knuckles against the glass counter impatiently. "Hey. Stop spacing out and weigh my jewelry already."
I snapped back to attention. "Do you have the original receipts for these pieces?"
Her eyes turned guarded, and she lifted her chin. "Lost them."
"But I know the exact weight of every piece, so don't even think about rigging your scale to cheat me."
She pulled out her ID and placed it on our precision scale.
The digital display read 6.66 grams.
That was the standard weight of an ID card.
She gave a satisfied nod. "Good. The scale checks out. Now weigh my jewelry."
I glanced at her ID.
Lavinia Dickerson.
The name tugged at something. I'd heard it before.
I was about to pick up her jewelry and set it on the scale when it hit me, and I froze.
I finally remembered why that name was so familiar.
She was my husband's first love.
Three years ago, on the night Derek Lawson and I got married, he'd drunk himself into oblivion and sobbed her name over and over.
That was how I first learned about Lavinia Dickerson.
Derek was the textbook definition of a fallen heir. He'd grown up wealthy, a trust-fund kid through and through. Then his parents died in an accident, creditors came knocking, and Derek had no choice but to liquidate everything the family owned to pay off the debts.
That was when Lavinia had left him, claiming she was going abroad to study.
The blow nearly destroyed him. One night, drunk out of his mind, Derek threw himself into a river. I'd just gotten off the night shift and happened to pull him out.
The morning after our wedding, I asked him about Lavinia.
Derek's face flushed with shame. He dropped to his knees in front of me and swore up and down that I was the only woman he'd ever love, that Lavinia was nothing but a ghost from his past.
I'd seen photos of her from back then. She'd looked so young, so different.
No wonder she'd seemed vaguely familiar when she first walked into the store.
When she caught me staring again, Lavinia slammed her palm on the counter. "What is wrong with you? Why do you keep gawking at me?"
Before I could respond, Hannah Mercer, my store manager, hurried over. She took the jewelry from my hands and turned to Lavinia with an apologetic smile. "I'm so sorry about that, ma'am. She's been feeling under the weather today, not quite herself. I'll take care of everything for you."
As she spoke, Hannah shot me a quick, knowing wink.
