For weeks she had insisted that their anniversary should be simple. Dinner at home, perhaps, or a walk in the park where he had proposed, if the weather held. Their daughter Rachel had volunteered to organize a large family celebration, and Evelyn had thanked her before firmly declining, explaining that she wanted one evening that belonged to the two of them. David had agreed without argument, although he had been quietly planning something else.
He had taken the old photograph from the drawer of his desk three nights earlier. It showed Evelyn at a crowded company picnic, standing beside a folding table and laughing at something someone had said beyond the camera. She wore a pale blue dress with sleeves she had sewn herself, and at her throat rested an elegant little necklace: an oval blue sapphire bordered by tiny diamonds, suspended from a fine silver-colored chain. The photograph was faded and slightly bent, but the necklace remained unmistakable.
David had not seen the necklace in more than thirty years. He remembered the weight of it in his palm the last time Evelyn had removed it, and he remembered the look she gave him when he tried to argue with her decision. Most vividly, he remembered making a promise on a rainy evening when the business they had built together was close to disappearing. One day, he had told her, he would buy her another necklace, one even more beautiful than the one she had sold.
Evelyn had laughed then, not unkindly, and said she would rather have enough money for groceries and the certainty that their employees could feed their families. She had never mentioned the necklace again except when old photographs brought it up. She did not wear much jewelry now, and when friends remarked upon the absence of diamonds from the life of a successful businessman's wife, she answered that she liked being able to work in her garden without worrying about losing a fortune in the soil. But David had never confused her lack of complaint with a lack of loss.
He knew there were things people surrendered without bitterness that still deserved to be remembered. Her necklace was one of them. So was the old car she had driven until its doors rusted, the vacations postponed for payroll, the dinners she ate alone when he was trying to save a contract, and the opportunities she gave up so their children would never have to feel the full weight of the company's uncertain beginnings. Wealth had arrived gradually enough that outsiders imagined it had always been there, but David could still name the month when they had less than forty dollars in their checking account.
On that anniversary morning, he had a plan. He would tell Evelyn he needed to visit the office, which was true in a broad sense, and he would stop at the luxury jewelry boutique occupying the ground floor of one of the commercial buildings his company owned. He had seen a