Completely. In the space of a breath, the ordinary professional composure of a person conducting a routine transaction was replaced by something that looked very much like shock.
He asked her, in a voice that was not quite steady, where she had gotten it.
She told him it had been her grandmother’s. That she had kept it for over twenty years.
He asked her grandmother’s name.
She said Merinda.
He gripped the edge of the counter.
He told her she needed to sit down.
Her first thought was practical and dreadful. She asked whether it was fake. Whether the thing she had protected for two decades and brought here as a last resort turned out to have no value at all.
He told her it was not fake.
He told her it was very real.
Then he picked up the phone.
The Call She Was Not Meant to Hear
She heard him say only a few words into the phone before the full strangeness of the moment reached her completely.
He said he had it. The necklace. And that she was here.
She asked who he was calling.
