owned were costume pieces except for one.
Amelia looked toward the top shelf of the closet.
She knew what was inside the wooden box before she reached for it.
Her mother’s locket lay on faded blue fabric, its thin chain curled around an oval pendant set with a dark green stone.
June Price had died eight years earlier after a brief illness.
She had been fifty-six, private by nature, and almost aggressively uninterested in possessions.
She bought clothes from clearance racks, drove old cars until repair shops begged her to stop, and saved every rubber band that entered the house.
The locket had always seemed out of place.
As a child, Amelia had assumed it was fake.
Once, when she was twelve, she asked why her mother wore it during thunderstorms.
June had been standing at the kitchen window watching rain move across the backyard.
“It belonged to someone who wanted me to remember who I was,” she said.
“Who?”
Her mother had closed her fingers around the pendant.
“Someone I loved before I knew how complicated loving people could become.”
Amelia remembered rolling her eyes.
At twelve, she hated mysterious adult answers.
Now she would have given anything to ask the question again.
She placed the locket in her palm.
“I need help,” she whispered to a woman who had been gone eight years.
“And this is the only thing left I know how to sell.”
The following afternoon, Amelia carried it into Bell & Finch.
The store was smaller than she expected, with dark wooden cabinets, cream walls, and an old brass clock ticking above the doorway.
No diamonds glittered under theatrical spotlights.
Most pieces looked antique.
A man behind the counter lifted his head from a tray of rings.
“Good afternoon.
Theo Bell.”
“Amelia Price.
I need an appraisal.”
Theo motioned toward a padded mat.
“Let’s have a look.”
She laid down the locket.
For the first few seconds, he showed no unusual reaction.
He examined the chain, tested the clasp, and rotated the pendant beneath a small lamp.
Then he saw the hinge.
His hand stopped.
Amelia noticed because everything about him until that moment had been fluid and practiced.
“Something wrong?”
Theo leaned closer.
“May I open it?”
“Of course.”
Inside was a faded photograph of June at perhaps twenty years old.
On the opposite side, a thin layer of green velvet filled the oval recess.
Theo stared at it.
“Has this lining ever been removed?”
“Not by me.”
He found a tiny notch with a metal pick.
The velvet panel lifted.
Beneath it sat an impossibly thin plate of gold.
Three letters were engraved across the center.
E.M.V.
Amelia leaned forward.
“I’ve never seen that.”
Theo removed his glasses and looked from the photograph to Amelia’s face.
“What was your mother’s full name?”
“June Marie Price.”
“Was Price her married name?”
“No.
She never married.
Price was her name.
Mine too.”
Theo’s expression did not relax.
“Do you know anyone named Evelyn Margaret Voss?”
“No.”
He stood very still.
Then he crossed the store and turned the front-door sign to CLOSED.
Amelia immediately reached for the necklace.
“Why are you doing that?”
“I’m sorry.
I’m not trying to frighten you.”
“You’re locking me in a jewelry store after asking about a woman I’ve never
