It was eighteen winters ago, in a cramped apartment that smelled faintly of mildew and boiled pasta. Mara had been nineteen and alone, the kind of alone that gnawed through bone. She had been carrying more than just rent and grocery bills—she had been carrying a life.
The necklace had been a family heirloom, passed on for generations. Her mother had given it to her a year before she had her baby—when she had turned of age. Her mother had told her the necklace was hardly its worth in weight.