The first-come list was tested, too, in the winter, when a limited piece came in, a necklace that several customers wanted, and a collector who had bought from the shop for years demanded to be put first, on the grounds of his history, and Tamsin, who was managing the list that day, told him, politely, that the list was first-come and that his name was third, and that the two people ahead of him had asked earlier, and that she would be glad to add his name as third, and that if the first two declined, the necklace would be his. The collector was angry, and he asked to see the owner, and Octavia came out, and she told him the same thing, in the same words, and she showed him the book, open on the counter, with the names and dates visible, and he looked at it, and he calmed, and he said that he had not realized the list was written down, and Octavia said that that was the point of writing it down, and he put his name third, and when the first two customers declined, for reasons of their own, the necklace became his, and he bought it, and he left satisfied, not because he had been given special treatment but because he had been treated fairly, and because fairness, once seen in a book on a counter, is difficult to argue with.
That winter brought snow to the Pearl District, and the shop was warm inside, and the cases gleamed, and the bench worked behind its glass, and the customers came in shaking snow from their coats, and Tamsin greeted them, and the apprentices worked, and Octavia worked, and the shop felt, to everyone in it, like a place that had found its rhythm. Octavia thought, sometimes, about the year that had passed since the Tuesday morning, and about how the shop had changed, and she thought that change, in a shop, is not an event but a habit, and that the habit had been formed by small decisions, repeated daily: a case opened, a greeting given, a list kept, a policy posted, a bench made visible, an estimate written by hand, a call made on Friday. She did not think about Hugh often, and when she did, she thought about him without anger, because anger, held too long, becomes a habit too, and she did not want that habit. She thought about him as a person who had made bad choices and was paying for them, and about the shop as a place that had made good choices and was living by them, and she thought that this was enough, and that enough, in a life, is a great deal.
In the following spring, the restitution account reached its end. Hugh's final payment arrived on schedule, as all of his payments had, and Octavia recorded it, and the bookkeeper reconciled the account, and the balance, which had once been ninety-nine thousand six hundred dollars, the sum of the diverted pieces and the appraisal fees, was now zero, or as close to zero as such accounts ever come, with a small remainder held for two customers who could not be located despite every effort, and whose money would be held in trust until they were found. Octavia wrote to the customers who had been compensated, a brief letter, not a celebration but a closing: that the restitution was complete, that their money or their pieces had been returned or compensated, and that the shop remained open to them, and that she was grateful for their patience. Most of them did not reply, and that was fine, because a letter that closes an account does not require a reply, and because Octavia had not written it to be thanked but to be finished. Two of them did reply, one to say that she had bought a new piece with the compensation and that she liked it,