the shop went on, and Octavia went on with it, and she thought, sometimes, about the future, and about how long she would run the shop, and about who would run it after her, and she thought that she did not need to decide that yet, because she was forty-two, and because the shop was young in her hands, and because the apprentices were young, and because Tamsin was young, and because there was time, and because time, used well, is the one thing a shop cannot buy, and the one thing it must not waste, and because she intended to use it well, by working, and by teaching, and by keeping the cases open, and by keeping the bench visible, and by keeping the list fair, and by keeping the promise on the wall, and by keeping the card beside the ring, where anyone could read it, and where it would remain, as long as the shop remained, which Octavia intended to be a very long time.
In the autumn, the shop held its first anniversary of the open evenings, though no one called it an anniversary, and though there was no cake, only coffee, and the regulars came, and the curious came, and a child came, the same child who had pressed her face to the glass to look at the emerald ring, now a year older, and she looked at the ring again, and she asked Octavia whether the ring had found its person yet, and Octavia told her that it had not, and that it was still waiting, and that waiting was part of a ring's life, and the child nodded, as if this made sense, and she looked at the card beside the ring, and she read it aloud, slowly, "Ask to see anything. No appointment needed," and she asked Octavia what it meant, and Octavia told her that it meant that anyone could ask to see anything, and that no one needed an appointment, and that the case would open, and the child said that was good, and Octavia agreed, and the child left with her mother, and Octavia stood by the case for a moment, looking at the ring, and at the card, and thinking about how a child's question can clarify what an adult's policy only approximates, and about how the card, in nine words, had said what all the reforms had tried to say, and about how the ring, still waiting, was not a failure but a promise, kept in a case, for the person who would one day ask for it, and be shown it, without an appointment, and without a judgment, and without a rule invented for the occasion.
One spring morning, a man came in carrying a ring he had bought online, convinced it was a diamond, and he asked Octavia to verify it, and Octavia examined it, and she found, quickly and with regret, that it was not a diamond at all, but a well-made imitation, set in gold that was thinner than it should have been, and sold with papers that were not worth the printing. She told him, gently and directly, because there is no kind way to tell a person that he has been cheated, only an honest way, and she showed him, under the loupe, the marks that distinguished the imitation: the too-perfect clarity, the wrong dispersion, the setting that had been cast rather than made by hand. He was quiet for a moment, and then he was angry, not at Octavia but at the seller, and then he was sad, because he had bought the ring for his wife, and because he had wanted it to be real, and Octavia told him that the gold, though thin, was real, and that the ring could be reset with a genuine stone, if he wished, and that she would file an appraisal that stated the truth, so that