David thought he must have misunderstood. He glanced briefly toward the door, where a uniformed guard stood near the building lobby, then looked back at Victor. "I don't need directions," he said. "I'd like to buy a necklace." Victor gave a short laugh that drew a startled glance from the associate at the watch counter.
"We don't sell twenty-dollar jewelry here," Victor replied. He said it loudly enough for the woman examining earrings to turn her head. "You'll find department stores a few streets over, and there are plenty of places that will be more appropriate for what you're looking for."
David felt the first unmistakable sting of humiliation, although the feeling was not new to him. He had been dismissed when he was young for not owning a suit, when he was struggling because he drove a borrowed truck, and in later years for being too old to be taken seriously by men who confused youth with innovation. But there was something especially ugly about being told to leave a shop before anyone had asked what he wanted. He looked at Victor quietly, deciding whether to answer.
"I can help you, sir," Emma said before he could speak. She came around the counter with a professional smile that did not ask him to prove anything. "Are you looking for something specific, or would you like to see a few options?" Victor shot her an irritated glance, but she kept her attention on David.
"Thank you," David said. He could not remember the last time those two words had felt quite so important. "I'm shopping for my wife. Tomorrow is our fortieth wedding anniversary, and I promised her something a long time ago."
Emma's expression warmed immediately. "Forty years," she repeated, with genuine admiration. "Congratulations. That sounds like a gift worth choosing carefully." David smiled for the first time since entering, and he reached into his jacket for the old photograph.
He placed it gently on a patch of black velvet Emma had spread over the counter. "She had a necklace like this years ago," he explained. "It doesn't have to be identical, but I thought perhaps you might have something with the same kind of stone." Emma leaned closer to look without touching the photograph until he nodded permission, treating the worn paper with the same care she gave the diamonds in the cases.
"That looks like a sapphire," she said. "An oval-cut center stone, small diamonds around it, very delicate setting. I think we have something quite close." David watched her move to the display, surprised by how efficiently she understood what he wanted. She did not ask whether the price would be too much for him, and she did not hurry him toward cheaper merchandise.
Victor remained nearby, listening with growing annoyance. A client at the watch counter had asked for him again, but he stayed long enough to see Emma select a locked display drawer and bring out a necklace in a pale velvet case. The sapphire was a rich blue, and the diamonds around it caught the light like tiny points of frost. Its platinum chain looked so fine that David instinctively thought of Evelyn's hands, the hands that had once repaired children's clothes and signed payroll checks beside him.