Tamsin's desk, in the same spring, handled an estate: a woman who had died, leaving a collection of jewelry to her three children, who came in together, as the siblings had before, and who asked Tamsin to appraise and divide it, and Tamsin did, with Octavia's help, grading each piece, photographing each piece, writing a description and a value for each piece, and giving each sibling a copy, and the siblings, who had come in tense, left calmer, because a fair appraisal, written down and given to everyone, is a kind of peace, and Tamsin, who had done the work, told Octavia afterward that she had been nervous, and Octavia told her that nervousness was appropriate, because the work mattered, and because a person who is not nervous about dividing a dead woman's jewelry has not understood what it is, and Tamsin nodded, and she kept the file, and she added it to her notebook of restorations, not as a restoration but as a division fairly done, which is, in its way, a restoration too, of a family, at least for a time, and of a trust, which is the most fragile thing a shop handles, and the most important.
On a slow summer day, when the shop was quiet and the light through the front windows was soft, Octavia sat at the bench resizing a ring for a customer who would collect it the next day, and she worked with the particular concentration that bench work requires, measuring, cutting, soldering, filing, polishing, each step in order, each step checked before the next began. The ring was a simple gold band, worn thin by years, and the customer wanted it larger, because her hands had changed, as hands do, and Octavia sized it up by a full size, adding gold, blending the join until it was invisible, and polishing it until it shone, and she thought, as she worked, about how much of a jeweler's work is invisible when it is done well: the join that cannot be seen, the prong that holds without showing, the setting that looks as if the stone had grown there. She thought that this was true of the shop's reforms as well: that the best of them were invisible, not because they were hidden but because they had become habit, and habit, when it is good, does not draw attention to itself, but simply is, the way a well-sized ring simply fits, without pinching and without slipping, and without the wearer thinking about it at all.
Tamsin came to the bench that afternoon, during a lull, and she stood beside Octavia, and they talked, as they often did, about the shop, and about its future, and about what should come next. Tamsin said that she thought the desk needed another person, because the volume had grown, and Octavia agreed, and they discussed who to hire, and what to look for, and they agreed that they would look for patience first, and skill second, because skill can be taught and patience, though it can be cultivated, is harder to instill in a person who does not have it. They talked about the apprentices, and about which of them should stay on, and about the trade school, and about the open evenings, and about whether to hold them twice a month instead of once, and they decided to try twice a month, and to see how it went, and they talked about the cases, and about whether to rotate the displays more often, and they decided to rotate them monthly, so that regular customers would always see something new, and so that pieces that had sat too long would be seen with fresh eyes. It was a practical conversation, without grandeur, and Octavia loved it for that, because a shop is run by practical conversations, not by visions, and because visions, without conversations, are only wishes, and wishes do not size rings.
The customer came the next day to collect the resized ring, and she tried it on, and it fit, and she smiled, and she paid, and she left, and Octavia went back to the bench, and to the next job, which was a clasp repair, and then to the next, which was a stone resetting, and the day passed in work, and the work passed in days, and