She had expected it to be dark, and it was dark, but it was also unexpectedly golden inside the Liberty City Loan amp; Pawn. The sun was low in the sky now, shining straight down Hitchens, and it fell through the pawnshop’s west-facing windows in long, warm beams. One of them turned a hanging saxophone into an instrument which looked as if it were made of fire. That’s not accidental, either, Rosie thought. Someone hung that sax there on purpose. Someone smart. Probably true, but she still felt a little enchanted. Even the smell of the place added to that sense of enchantment-a smell of dust and age and secrets. Very faintly, off to her left, she could hear many clocks ticking softly. She walked slowly up the center aisle, past ranks of acoustic guitars strung up by their necks on one side and glass cases filled with appliances and stereo equipment on the other. There seemed to be a great many of those oversized, multi-function sound-systems that were called “boomboxes” on the TV shows. At the far end of this aisle was a long counter with another neon sign bent in an arc overhead. GOLD SILVER FINE JEWELRY, it said in blue. Then, below it, in red: WE BUY WE SELL WE TRADE. Yes, but do you crawl on your belly like a reptile? Rosie thought with a small ghost of a smile, and approached the counter. A man was sitting on a stool behind it. There was a jeweller’s loupe in his eye. He was using it to look at something which lay on a pad in front of him. When she got a little closer, Rosie saw that the item under examination was a pocket-watch with its back off. The man behind the counter was poking into it with a steel probe so thin she could barely see it. He was young, she thought, maybe not even thirty yet. His hair was long, almost to his shoulders, and he was wearing a blue silk vest over a plain white undershirt. She thought the combination unconventional but rather dashing. There was movement off to her left. She turned in that direction and saw an older gentleman squatting on the floor and going through piles of paperbacks stacked under a sign reading THE GOOD OLD STUFF. His topcoat was spread out around him in a fan, and his briefcase-black, old-fashioned, and starting to come unsprung at the seams-stood patiently beside him, like a faithful dog.

“Help you, ma’am?” She returned her attention to the man behind the counter, who had removed the loupe and was now looking at her with a friendly grin. His eyes were hazel with a greenish undertint, very pretty, and she wondered briefly if Pam might classify him as someone interesting. She guessed not. Not enough tectonic plates sliding around under the shirt.

“Maybe you can,” she said. She slipped off her wedding ring and her engagement ring, then put the plain gold band into her pocket. It felt strange not to be wearing it, but she supposed she could get used to that. A woman capable of walking out of her own house for good without even a change of underwear could probably get used to quite a lot. She laid the diamond down on the velvet pad beside the old watch the jeweller had been working on.

“How much would you say that’s worth?” she asked him. Then, as an afterthought, she added:

“And how much could you give me for it?” He slipped the ring over the end of his thumb, then held it up into the dusty sunbeam slanting in over his shoulder through the third of the west-facing windows. The stone sent back sparks of multicolored fire into her eyes, and for just a moment she felt a pang of regret. Then the jeweller gave her a quick look, just a glance, really, but it was long enough for her to see something in his hazel eyes she didn’t immediately understand-a look that seemed to say Are you joking?

“What?” she asked.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Just a mo.” He screwed the loupe back into his eye and took a good long look at the stone in her engagement ring. When he looked up the second time, his eyes were surer and easier to read. Impossible not to read, really. Suddenly Rosie knew everything, but she felt no surprise, no anger, and no real regret. The best she could do was a weary sort of embarrassment: why had she never realized before? How could she have been such a chump? You weren’t, that deep voice answered her. You really weren’t, Rosie. If you hadn’t known on some level that the ring was a fake-known it almost from the start-you would have come into a place like this a lot sooner. Did you ever really believe, once you got past your twenty-second birthday, that is, that Norman Daniels would have given you a ring worth not just hundreds but thousands of dollars? Did you really? No, she supposed not. She’d never been worth it to him, for one thing. For another, a man who had three locks on the front door, three on the back, motion-sensor lights in the yard, and a touch-alarm on his new Sentra automobile would never have let his wife do the marketing with a diamond as big as the Ritz on her finger.

“It’s a fake, isn’t it?” she asked the jeweller.

“Well,” he said, “it’s a perfectly real zirconia, but it’s certainly not a diamond, if that’s what you mean.”

“Of course it’s what I mean,” she said.

“What else would I mean?”

“Are you okay?” the jeweller asked. He looked genuinely concerned, and she had an idea, now that she was seeing him up close, that he was closer to twenty-five than thirty.

“Hell,” she said, “I don’t know. Probably.” She took a Kleenex out of her purse, though, just in case of a tearful outburst-these days she never knew when one was coming. Or maybe a good laughing jag; she’d had several of those, as well. It would be nice if she could avoid both extremes, at least for the time being. Nice to leave this place with at least a few shreds of dignity.

“I hope so,” he said, “because you’re in good company. Believe me, you are. You’d be surprised how many ladies, ladies just like you-”

“Oh, stop,” she told him.

“When I need something uplifting, I’ll buy a support bra.” She had never in her life said anything remotely like that to a man-it was downright suggestive-but she had never felt like this in her whole life… as if she were spacewalking, or running giddily across a tightrope with no net beneath. And wasn’t it perfect, in a way? Wasn’t it the only fitting epilogue to her marriage? I decided on the rock, she heard him say in her mind; his voice had been shaking with sentiment, his gray eyes actually a little moist. Because I love you, Rose. For a moment the laughing jag was very close. She held it at arm’s length by sheer force of will.

“Is it worth anything?” she asked.

“Anything at all? Or is it just something he got out of a gum-machine somewhere?” He didn’t bother with the loupe this time, just held the ring up into the sunbeam again.

“Actually, it is worth a bit,” he said, sounding relieved to be able to pass on a little good news.

“The stone’s a ten-buck item, but the setting… that might have gone as much as two hundred bucks, retail.

“Course, I couldn’t give you that,” he added hurriedly.

“My dad’d read me the riot act. Wouldn’t he, Robbie?”

“Your dad always reads you the riot act,” said the old man squatting by the paperbacks.

“That’s what kids are for.” He didn’t look up. The jeweller glanced at him, glanced back at Rosie, and stuck a finger into his half-open mouth, miming a retch. Rosie hadn’t seen that one since high school, and it made her smile. The man in the vest smiled back.

“I could give you fifty for it,” he said.

“Interested?”

“No, thanks.” She picked up the ring, looked at it thoughtfully, then wrapped it in the unused Kleenex she was holding.

“You check any of the other shops along here,” he said.

“If anyone says they’ll give you more, I’ll match the best offer. That’s dad’s policy, and it’s a good one.” She dropped the Kleenex into her purse and snapped it shut.