The waiter, terrified and confused, sprinted to the service pantry. Brenda and the other guests watched, utterly bewildered. This was a bizarre, incomprehensible breach of protocol. Augusta Sterling had not touched anything without assistance in a decade. Her world was one where things were brought to her, presented to her, never retrieved by her.

The waiter returned, his hands shaking as he presented the pristine white gloves on a small silver tray. Augusta, with the slow, deliberate care of a surgeon preparing for a delicate operation, put them on. Then, ignoring everyone—ignoring her son, her grandson, and her hysterical, triumphant daughter-in-law—she walked directly to where my locket lay abandoned on the floor.

With a grace that defied her age, she bent down and, with her gloved hands, reverently, tenderly, as if handling a sacred relic, she picked up the silver locket from the cold marble.