She had to find the necklace. Fleeing east on I-64, Leyna felt under her thighs, swept her fingers around the cupholders, and dug into both sides of her bra with no success.

Panic bubbled into her throat as she slowed to a stop on the highway shoulder. Once out of the driver’s seat, she patted every inch of the recently vacuumed carpet under her seat, but found only the oil change receipt from two days ago and a pen.

The deep purple night was fading into dawn’s lavender.

A tractor-trailer roared toward her. She scrambled back into her silver Honda before it passed; the car shuddered in the truck’s wake. She locked herself in and again felt her sternum for the missing white opal. She touched her swollen lip. Her husband’s grandmother’s antique necklace had been her engagement gift. In lieu of a ring they couldn’t afford with her income as a yoga teacher, his as a musician.

He’d fastened the delicate gold chain, brushing calloused fingertips over the nape of her neck, her collarbones. “You won’t believe what it’s worth.” Without actual numbers, he had explained how valuable and rare the stone was, set in lacy twenty-four-karat gold, floating on the twisty gold chain, and how his father had taken much convincing to surrender it from his safe deposit box.

She would have to backtrack to the motel where she’d failed to sleep and left after only a few hours. If the necklace wasn’t there, she’d rewind farther to the rest stop and possibly to her first stop at the gas station.

Back in the motel parking lot—having left only three hours before—she found the housekeeper just arriving. The woman nodded slowly, absorbing Leyna’s story of the lost necklace. Without a word she unlocked the room where Leyna had spent a few hours pacing and staring at brown moisture stains on the ceiling.

“An opal, you said?” The housekeeper waited in the doorway while Leyna—on hands and knees—searched under the bed, then yanked back the shiny, royal-blue bedspread, lifted the rough white sheets.

“Right. It has huge sentimental value. I’ll be lost if I don’t find it.” Leyna scanned the chipped bedside table, the desk by the window, and moved to the bathroom.

“You’re a Libra?”

Leyna poked her head back into the main room. “A what?”

“A Libra.” The housekeeper’s eyes landed on Leyna’s lip.

Leyna met the woman’s stare and lied. “Yes.”

“That’s good.” Her face softened, and she stepped into the room. “No one should wear an opal if she’s not a Libra. Bad luck. Marital strife.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” The necklace wasn’t there.

She drove to the rest stop, where the previous midnight—against every self-preserving instinct she still possessed—she’d rushed in, her bladder about to explode. The flat, brick building had been empty, silent, but now she had to wait for the stall she’d visited. She paced outside the door as the mother and child inside debated what snacks to buy at the vending machines. Leyna stared at the metal latch until they finally flushed.

“Excuse me.” The young mother tucked her black hair behind her ears and pulled her daughter away from Leyna.

She caught her reflection in the mirror and recoiled. Her shirt rumpled beyond reason, mascara stained her cheekbones, and her faint blonde hair only half—at best—in the ponytail she’d arranged yesterday morning, a lifetime ago. Purple bloomed beneath her lip. Unhinged, she thought. I look unhinged.

In the stall, she crouched to look on either side and behind the toilet. Perhaps bad luck had caused her to flush the antique opal. Her necklace might be coursing through pipes beneath the interstate, heading to the Atlantic. She searched the damp tiled floor, beneath the sinks and walked the sidewalk from restroom to parking lot and back again, scanning the concrete, the patchy grass. Nothing.

She drove on.

She considered returning to their apartment to pack her things. He would beg her to stay. As an apology, he might buy her the sky-blue table for their kitchen. She’d coveted it from outside the consignment storefront window next to the bar where his band played every Tuesday night. But no. His love seared and scorched, and she wouldn’t continue withering under his heat.

Her last stop—yesterday’s first stop—was the gas station. She parked in front of the mini-mart’s windows, its signs inviting her in for slushies, coffee, hot dogs. She paced around the gas pumps and waited for a couple in a pickup truck to pull away so she could scan the pavement, the ledge around the pump and trash can. Attempting to retrace the exact steps she’d taken less than twenty-four hours before, she squinted at the ground, spotting only a straw, cigarette butts, and a fragment of a peanut M&M wrapper.

Inside, she didn’t find the woman who’d worked the register the previous day. The woman had handed her a plastic bag, gestured to the fountain drinks, then tapped her own lower lip. “Fill with ice. For swelling.”

Leyna had dumped ice into the flimsy plastic bag, tied it in a knot. She’d murmured “thank you” to the woman at the register, whose eyes said everything.

Today, a young man with spiked black hair stood behind the counter. Leyna searched the restroom, the refrigerated drinks, and each aisle, passing chips and cookies, air fresheners, and phone chargers. She squeezed her eyes shut because she would not cry in this goddamn mini-mart. She opened them, blinked, and there it was—nestled between cellophane-wrapped baked goods and peanut butter granola bars.

Her white opal glimmered like the inside of a seashell. Its weight in her hand, the familiar ridges of its gold setting under her fingers. She hadn’t removed it from her neck since the day he’d fastened it. But the fragile gold chain had broken; its clasp still closed.

She held it tight in her palm, pressing it to her chest as she returned to her car. She drank the small cup of bitter coffee and ate half of the prepackaged, sweet and gritty blueberry muffin that she’d nearly left without paying for.

The day before, she’d passed the jewelry store across the street and hadn’t noticed its front window sign promising, We sell AND buy! Leyna pulled into the parking lot and waited until a middle-aged woman with a too-tight beige skirt and jacket unlocked the front door at exactly 10:00 a.m.

Her husband’s grandmother’s opal would provide money and time for Leyna to begin again. She strode in and asked for an appraiser. “I have an antique necklace.”

The woman eyed Leyna from face to handbag. She sighed and removed her reading glasses from the tip of her nose. “I’ll see if he can fit you in.”

Moments later, a bald, shriveled man in a white shirt and crooked black tie bent over her opal and, saying “Hmmm,” turned it over. He pulled a magnifying tool from his pocket and looked closer.

Leyna imagined a new apartment, maybe her own yoga studio. “It’s an opal. And very old. My—it was my grandmother’s.”

 The man pressed his lips together until they turned white.

“A friend told me that opals symbolize hope and truth.” She waited.

 He stood and arranged her broken necklace on the black velvet cloth.

“I did some research when I got it. You probably know this, but the ancient Greeks thought opals would let you see into the future. ‘The gift of prophecy,’ I think it said and—”

“My dear.”

She blinked.

“My dear, I’m so sorry to tell you that your very pretty necklace—gifted to you by your loving grandmother—is neither old nor valuable. In the monetary sense.”

“That can’t be true.”

“I’m afraid that it’s not an opal. It’s glass.”

“But what about the gold? The setting and chain? It’s twenty-four karat, that’s what he said. That has to be worth something.”

He shook his head, eyes soft and watery. “If you will look, right here.” He held out his magnifying tool. She hesitated before taking it and peering closely through its lens. When she did, his knobby, wrinkled finger pointed to the clasp that read 10K.

She set the tiny metal cylinder on the black velvet next to the necklace. “So it’s not real.”

“Real can be defined in many different ways. Your grandmother’s necklace is surely as real as it was before you walked into our shop.”

She nodded, then shook her head and began to turn away.

“My dear? Your necklace? Would you like me to repair the chain? It won’t take but a moment.”

“That won’t help. But thank you.” She plucked it from the counter and rushed out, hoping he wouldn’t charge for the appraisal.

She allowed herself a few moments to cry in her car, then drove toward their apartment, planning to pack what she could and find a cheap lawyer. She’d left in a rush with no plan other than the leaving.

 She reached her starting point, the rewind of her escape complete, the door ajar. His guitar cases and an unfamiliar suitcase lined the narrow hall. She found him in their cramped kitchen. A woman with her same hair and build held Leyna’s electric teakettle and asked him, “Are we taking this?”

Her husband stopped stacking his pint glasses into her shower caddy. He turned to Leyna. “Thought you left.”

Leyna rubbed goose bumps on her arms. She looked from her husband to the woman, who searched for space for Leyna’s teakettle but, unable to find any, handed it to Leyna. Their Formica table—several bar coasters wedged beneath its short leg—strained under the weight of cast-iron skillets, her Crock-Pot, and unspooling paper towels. An open cabinet door revealed empty shelves. The coffeemaker sat in a box on the linoleum floor.

Leyna reminded him that it was his name on the lease.

He flicked his fingers at her bruised mouth. “What happened there?”

Leyna flinched. She hoped the blonde woman noticed. Leyna hoped the younger woman could see the truth of her future in Leyna’s dismantled kitchen, could feel her throbbing lip. From her pocket, she drew the fake opal, the greening gold chain, and dropped it onto their kitchen table. “You can keep this. You won’t believe what it’s worth.”

THE END