“It is just a decoration,” I said, though I had never looked closely at the metal.
“It is not a decoration,” Arthur said. He leaned forward, his hands flat on the scratched glass. “I have been looking at sketches of this engraving for twenty years.”
The words sat between us. I stepped back, my boots squeaking on the linoleum floor.
“What do you mean, sketches?” I asked. “Who would have sketches of my grandmother’s necklace?”
He did not answer me. His gaze shifted from the necklace to the corner of the room, then back to my face, studying my eyes and my jawline.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I told you,” I said. “I am Cara. Cara Miller.”
“No,” he whispered, looking down at the silver chain. “No, you do not understand what this is.”
I will try the place on the turnpike
“I need three hundred dollars, Arthur,” I said. “If you cannot loan me the money, just give it back. I will try the place on the turnpike.”
I reached out my hand to take the necklace, but Arthur moved faster than I expected. He slid the piece back toward his side of the counter, his palm covering the blue stone.
“Do not go to the turnpike,” he said. His voice was shaking now.
He looked toward the front window of the shop, as if expecting someone to be standing outside on the sidewalk.
“I need to make a call,” he said.
“A call to who?” I asked.
He did not answer. He reached down under the counter, his hand coming back up holding a black telephone, his fingers shaking as he began to dial a number.
Arthur turned his shoulder toward the back corner of the shop, pressing the heavy black plastic receiver tight against his ear.
His voice was nothing but a low, gravelly vibration that barely carried across the glass display counter, his words muffled by his broad hand.
I leaned forward
I leaned forward, my knuckles pressing hard into the cool glass, trying to catch any fragment of the conversation over the dry hum of a cheap space heater on the floor.
“Yes,” Arthur said into the mouthpiece, his gaze fixed on the floorboards. “The engraving is exact. The blue sapphire is in the center of the silver setting.”
He went quiet, listening to the rapid, faint crackle of a woman’s voice on the other end of the line, his head nodding in slow, rhythmic intervals.
My right index finger worked the plain silver band on my hand, twisting it round and round until the skin underneath went red and pinched.
The yellow eviction notice was folded tight in my back pocket, a stiff square of paper pressing against my hip with every shift of my weight.
“I understand,” Arthur whispered, his eyes darting toward the front window where the morning light was beginning to pale. “I will hold her here as long as I can.”
He hung up the phone with a slow, deliberate click that seemed to echo in the narrow, dusty shop.
He did not look at me right away
He did not look at me right away, instead reaching deep into his cardigan pocket for his yellow microfiber cloth.
He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and began to polish the lenses, his thumb moving in small, tense circles over the glass.
“Who was that?” I asked, my voice cutting through the hum of the heater.
He kept his eyes on the lens, breathing a fog of moisture onto the glass before wiping it again with methodical care.
“A collector,” he said, his gravelly voice flat.
“You said you had been looking at sketches of this engraving for twenty years,” I said, leaning closer to the counter screen. “What sketches?”
He did not answer, his fingers moving slowly over the plastic frame of his glasses as if he were trying to find a crack in them.
“Where did you say you got this, Cara?” Arthur asked, his hand stopping for a brief second on the microfiber cloth.
“My grandmother Merinda,” I said. “She lived over in the valley.”
Arthur’s hand started moving again, slower this time. “Merinda,” he repeated, his gravelly voice dropping. “She raised you?”
“Yes,” I said, watching him closely. “She raised me since I was a baby.”
“And she gave you this?” he asked, pointing a blunt finger toward the safe behind him.
“It was in a shoebox in her closet,” I said. “With some old letters and her wool scarf.”
“Is it fake?” I asked, my voice rising. “Is that why you called them?”
“It is not a counterfeit,” he said, his voice dropping even lower as he slipped his glasses back onto his nose. “It is very real.”
“Then give it back to me.” I reached toward the blue velvet jewelry tray where the silver necklace lay.
Arthur slid the tray back, just out of my reach, behind the safety of the metal counter screen.
“I cannot do that just yet,” he said.
“It belongs to my grandmother,” I said, my grip tightening on the edge of the display case. “It is mine.”
“The person I called is on her way from west of the river,” he said, ignoring my outstretched hand. “She needs to see it.”
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