At 7:06 p.m., there was a knock at her door.
“Who is it?” she called, heart pounding.
“It’s me,” a small voice answered.
She opened the door.
Ethan stood there in a hoodie and sneakers, hair sticking up, clutching a folded piece of paper.
Behind him, on the sidewalk, a frazzled-looking nanny was hurrying toward them, talking into her phone.
“Ethan,” Clara whispered. “You can’t be here. Your grandmother—”
“I ran,” he said. “From the park. She was on the phone.”
He threw his arms around her waist, squeezing tight.
“I know you didn’t take it,” he said into her sweater. “I told Dad. He didn’t listen. But I know.”
Clara wiped her eyes, her throat too tight to speak.
He pulled back and handed her the folded paper.
“Here,” he said shyly. “I drew this for you.”
She unfolded it.
A crayon drawing of a big house on a hill.
A little boy.
A woman with black hair in a ponytail.
The word FAMILY written above them in shaky letters.
Her chest ached.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “You need to go back, mijo. They’ll panic.”
“I didn’t want you to be alone,” he said.
The nanny reached them, panting.
“Ethan! You can’t just run off like that!”
“I was saying bye,” he said defiantly.
The nanny gave Clara an apologetic look, then grabbed Ethan’s hand.
“I’ll see you again,” he said, looking back over his shoulder as she pulled him away.
Clara stood in the doorway long after they’d gone, the drawing trembling in her hands.
Something she’d thought was dead—her fight—stirred.
She wasn’t going to let them define her as a thief.
Not without trying to be heard.
With Jenna’s help, Clara started to fight back.
They didn’t have much.
No money.
No big-name attorneys.
But they had persistence.
They requested the security footage from the Hamilton estate.
Most of it looked normal.
People moving through rooms.
Lights turning off and on.
But on the night the necklace disappeared, there was a glitch.
A blackout.
“The feed cuts out for exactly four minutes,” Jenna said, frowning at the laptop screen. “From 10:42 p.m. to 10:46 p.m. in the upstairs hallway outside the jewelry room.”
“Could someone have… turned it off?” Clara asked.
“Maybe,” Jenna said. “Or the system failed. Or someone with access tampered with it.”
They filed a motion to compel more detailed logs from the security company.
The Hamiltons’ attorney fought it.
The judge denied it.
“Speculation,” Hale said. “The footage is irrelevant. The fact remains: Ms. Alvarez was in the vicinity. She had opportunity. She had motive.”
“What motive?” Clara whispered.
“She’s poor,” Margaret had said in her statement. “People like her always want what they can’t have.”
That line was quoted in three different newspapers.
On the day of the trial, Clara put on her old uniform.
It was the nicest thing she owned. Pressed. Clean. The same pale gray blouse and black slacks she’d worn in the Hamiltons’ halls for over a decade.
Jenna met her on the courthouse steps, her satchel over her shoulder, hair in a tight bun.
“You don’t have to wear that,” Jenna said softly.
“I know,” Clara replied. “I chose it.”
The courtroom was packed.
Reporters in the back very obviously pretending not to be reporters.
Curious locals in the benches.
At the front, the Hamiltons’ side of the gallery was filled: Margaret in a navy suit, Adam in a tailored gray one, jaw tight, gaze fixed straight ahead. Ethan sat between them in a small blazer and uncomfortable shoes, swinging his feet.
He looked small.
He looked scared.
A nanny hovered behind him like a shadow.
Clara sat at the defense table with Jenna, feeling like she’d wandered into the wrong movie and couldn’t find the exit.
“Ready?” Jenna whispered.
“No,” Clara said. “But I’m here.”
The prosecution went first.
Victor Hale painted Clara as a woman “trusted too much for too long.”
He called witnesses.
A Hamilton neighbor who testified about the heirloom’s supposed value. “Priceless, really. Irreplaceable,” she said, dabbing at her eyes for effect.
The estate’s head of security, who explained how the cameras worked. Under cross, he admitted he hadn’t personally reviewed every second of footage.
A financial analyst created a little narrative about how someone in Clara’s “financial position” might be “tempted.”
Clara wanted to scream.
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