At home her mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of soup and a stack of utility bills. Emma set down her bag, washed her hands, and told her what had happened. Her mother listened closely, her face growing more worried with every detail about Victor's threats. When Emma finished, she waited for the lecture about needing to protect herself in an expensive city.
Instead, her mother reached across the table and squeezed her fingers. "You might have made things harder for yourself," she said. "I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But you did not make a man cut up another man's card, and you did not make him treat a customer like dirt. Those choices belonged to him."
Emma let out a breath she had been holding since the afternoon. "I thought you'd be angry with me," she admitted. Her mother smiled sadly. "I'm frightened for you. That's different. And I am proud you knew the difference between being loyal to your job and being loyal to something wrong."
Later, after the apartment had gone quiet, Emma opened her gemology textbook but found she could not concentrate. She took out the small silver pendant from beneath her blouse, the one her grandmother had worn while working in a bakery for thirty years, and remembered being told that it was worth very little money. It was worth an enormous amount to her, and nobody could have discovered that by looking at it in a display case. She closed the textbook, turned off the lamp, and wondered whether Mr.
Williams's wife would wear her new necklace the following evening.
On the morning of their fortieth anniversary, Evelyn woke before David and went downstairs to make coffee. She had not slept particularly well, partly because the season was changing and her knees ached in the damp weather, and partly because she had spent half the night wondering about the little shopping bag David had tried so unsuccessfully to hide. She did not mind surprises, exactly, but after forty years she preferred surprises that did not require either of them to pretend the other was a stranger. She found him awake in the kitchen, standing beside the window with two mugs already filled.
"You beat me," she said, taking the blue-handled mug. David smiled. "Forty years ago today, I was awake at this hour because I was too nervous to sleep. I thought perhaps I should honor the tradition." He stepped closer and kissed her gently, the kind of kiss that made no demands and needed no audience.
Evelyn rested her forehead briefly against his. "Forty years," she murmured. "You still remember where you put the wedding ring, I hope." He pretended to check his pockets, then held up his left hand. "I've been keeping track of it. It's served me reasonably well so far."