him she was glad he had, and she meant it, and he left with the chain in a box, and Octavia, who had overheard from the bench, thought about how close the shop had come to losing him, and about how many customers a shop loses without ever knowing, because the ones who are turned away rarely come back to explain.
The woman in scrubs came in on her lunch break, as she had before, and this time she was shown the watch she asked about, and she tried it on, and she looked at it for a long time, and she did not buy it that day, because she wanted to think about it, and Tamsin told her to take her time, and she came back three days later, on her next lunch break, and she bought it, and she told Tamsin that she had been saving for months, and that the watch was for herself, because she had worked hard and she wanted something beautiful that was hers. Tamsin wrapped it carefully, and the woman left smiling, and Octavia thought about the entry in Tamsin's notebook, the woman in scrubs told to come back another day, and about how the difference between that day and this one was not the watch, which was the same, but the welcome, which was not.
The young couple came in on a rainy evening, plainly dressed, holding hands, and they asked to see engagement rings, and Octavia herself served them, because Tamsin was with another customer, and she showed them the rings, and she explained the stones, and she did not hurry them, and they tried on ring after ring, and they laughed, and they argued gently about gold and platinum, and they left without buying, because they wanted to look at more shops, and Octavia told them to take their time, and they came back two weeks later, and they bought the ring they had liked best, and they told Octavia that they had been to three other shops, and that hers was the only one where they had not felt rushed or judged, and Octavia thought that this, too, was a kind of success, though it would never appear in a sales report as anything but a single sale.
The man with the cane came in slowly, leaning on it, and he asked about a signet ring, and Tamsin brought him a chair, because standing at a case is hard when you need a cane, and she showed him the rings at his level, and he chose one, and he had it engraved with his initials, and he came back to collect it, and he told Tamsin that he had once been kept waiting until he left, and that he had not expected to be offered a chair, and Tamsin told him that a chair was a small thing, and he said that small things were the things that mattered, and Octavia, listening from the bench, thought that he was right, and that the shop's reforms, which had seemed large when she announced them, were really a collection of small things: a chair, a greeting, an open case, a list that could be seen, a policy that could be read, a bench that could be watched. Small things, done consistently, were what made a shop honest, and honesty, done consistently, was what made a shop last.
Not every customer who had been steered away came back, and Octavia knew that, and she did not pretend otherwise. Some of them had bought elsewhere, and some of them had decided that jewelry was not for them, and some of them had simply moved on, as people do, and their absence was a cost of Hugh's years that could not be repaid with restitution, because restitution pays