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“I like it. I will bring these designs to Mrs. Brown. I believe she would like to see them. There’s only one problem, Anyu,” he said, holding the brooch with the inscription IM.

“An artist’s name is eternal; it outlives the artist, outshines an era, and outlasts an empire.

As the designer of this set, I believe you are entitled to create your own maker’s marks. ”

He offered her the chance to use her own signature, the signature every serious jeweler dreamed of. She thought for a moment. Holding the jeweler’s saw, she carefully carved one letter on the brooch.

Now, she was part of his name. IMA.

Isaac kissed her forehead. Then, his right arm in a sling, the box of jewelry safely tucked inside his pocket, he left the shop with Uncle David to meet with Mrs. Brown, who had arranged a meeting with a group of private buyers, two compradors working for Shanghai Bank and some diplomats’ wives. In the afternoon, they returned.

“How long will it take you to complete another set?” Isaac asked.

“Three weeks at most,” she said.

“And a dozen sets?”

“Three months. Why?”

A diplomat’s wife had placed an order for a dozen Eternal Love sets.

It had taken her two months, not three, when she set down the polishing cloth and wiped her smudged hands.

A dozen sets of Eternal Love had been completed.

In front of her were boxes of jewelry: necklaces with butterfly pendants, butterfly brooches, butterfly rings, butterfly bracelets, and butterfly earrings.

She smiled. Her work had just started—more orders appeared on the rack as word got out that she had returned.

Then, one day, while Anyu was soldering one of her Eternal Love necklaces, Esther went into labor in the kitchen.

The whole house jolted. Samuel went to fetch Mr. Dearborn from the couple’s apartment but couldn’t find him.

He finally caught him at his shop in the Settlement.

Isaac closed the showroom, the twin aunts boiled hot water, and Anyu carried a basin and towels, her mouth dry, her heart pounding in fear, waiting to help.

Oh, poor Esther. Her heartrending screams could have ripped the apartment in half.

At midnight, Esther, bathed in sweat, gave birth to a baby boy—Matthew.

Anyu took a peek at the infant in Esther’s arms—his eyes shut, his hands curled near his chin as if contemplating, and there were wrinkles on his forehead and white bumps and red pimples on his cheeks.

He was so small, delicate, his face a fascinating wonder, his fingers and toes as tiny as peanuts.

She thought of the life she had lost. Had she kept him, would he have been so small as well?

Esther gave Matthew to her to hold; Anyu was nervous.

Carefully, she held her arms out and received the bundle.

When she touched him, she started to tremble—it was as if the whole world were in her hands.

She had to be careful, or she would drop him and break him.

But he was weightless! Lighter than a hammer!

And he was crying! Why did he cry? Anyu laughed, tears bursting out of her eyes.

Esther’s baby, Esther’s baby. He had captured her heart the moment he arrived, and he would have hers for as long as she lived. Anyu blinked back her tears.

After she handed him back to Esther to nurse, Anyu went to her workbench and began drawing a goldfish.

The next day, another set of designs, Pure Love, was created.

Isaac brought it to a jewelers’ meeting. The head of a bank ordered two dozen of the Pure Love set, including rings, necklaces, and brooches.

With the birth of her newborn, Esther took time off from the shop.

The showroom was short-staffed. Whenever she could, Anyu helped with sales.

Unlike her previous experience at the counter, now talking to the customers felt like a relaxing and educational diversion.

The younger generation came with a purpose, an engagement, a birthday, or a gift of forgiveness.

The older customers were different. They shopped because they wanted to, and they didn’t need prompts to dive into their past, their quarrels with their sons and their spats with their daughters-in-law.

They went on and on, enumerating their ailments, from ankle pains to urinary tract infections.

But they could also be emotional—one elderly Italian woman shared a heartwarming story about wanting a custom locket to keep the few gray hairs of her recently deceased husband, to whom she had been married for fifty-five years.

Patiently, Anyu listened, and patiently, she smiled, giving them suggestions.

A good jeweler makes jewelry, but a master jeweler builds relationships. She finally understood what Isaac had said.

A stubby man wearing a black fedora entered her shop one day.

He wanted to talk about his mother. She was a spirited woman, he said, who enjoyed driving motorcars and shooting.

A decade ago, their home caught fire; she dove into their home to rescue his Chinese governess.

The governess was saved, but his mother perished in the fire.

He wondered if Anyu would design a necklace to honor his mother. He had come to her store personally, for he admired her designs. His mother’s name was Laura, and he was Lawrence Kadoorie, the owner of the famous Marble Hall, son of Horace Kadoorie, one of her former clients.

The Kadoorie family were Jews transplanted to Shanghai years ago, Anyu had learned.

They had arrived in Shanghai with nothing but rose to be successful business owners, and they were known for their generous charity toward the poor.

She was touched by the mother’s heroic story and the profound bond between the mother and the son and wanted to create a pendant to honor their special love as well as the family’s resilient spirit as immigrants in Shanghai.

For jewelry did not simply signify value for its diamonds and gold; it meant so much more—it was a token of hope, a gem of memory, and an emblem of conviction for eternity.

Two weeks later, she created her third set, Good Love, featuring a dragonfly with two en tremblant wings, their veins formed from diamonds shaped like an L , a cabochon sapphire for the thorax, and an elongated abdomen crafted from rectangular jadeite set in gold.

Lawrence Kadoorie’s eyes lit up when she put the pendant in his hands.

“A dragonfly,” he said, smiling. A man well versed in Chinese culture, he understood that the dragonfly, revered for its ability to tread on water, trek on land, and fly through the air, was lauded as a good luck charm, a harbinger of positivity and prosperity, and a symbol of adaptability.

But more than that, the dragonfly, as the folklore described, was a protector of children, a messenger from the beloved in the spiritual world.

When he displayed it at a party in his residence, the Marble Hall, the city exploded with excitement. Accolades poured in:

“A perfect marriage of Eastern whimsy and Western aesthetics.”

“An exquisite conjury of gold and gemstones.”

Good Love would become the most demanded jewelry line for the year of 1932.

Everything was going exactly as she had imagined—her creations brought the House of Mandelburg to new heights of popularity, and the brand, having taken a hit after her departure, reclaimed its iconic status to become the most favored in the city.

This was precisely what she wanted for Isaac, for his family. Her family.

Then, one afternoon, in March 1933, Samuel came into the kitchen, where she had been smoking.

His golden hair was combed neatly, parted in the middle, his gray eyes intense.

He hadn’t gambled again, Esther had told her, and as far as Anyu could tell, Samuel, at twenty-seven years old, had recommitted himself to the family business, working during the day.

In the evenings, he’d go out, and when he came back, she could smell a whiff of fragrance on his suits.

But Samuel wasn’t entirely warm to her since her return. He sometimes created minor inconveniences, hoarding the tools she needed.

“Smoking again?” he said.

“What do you want?” Anyu blew smoke through the open window in the kitchen, holding what must have been her thirtieth cigarette of the day.

It was impossible to work without smoking.

Tobacco gave her spurts of energy and kept her mind sharp, so sleeping was no longer a necessity.

She only dozed off in the workshop for two to three hours a day, all that she needed.

But smoking in the workshop was unsafe; as a solution, she took breaks smoking in the kitchen with the window open.

“Mr. Walters was scheduled to deliver diamonds, but he failed to show up.”

“Your father knows about this, doesn’t he?”

Samuel hesitated.

“Did Mr. Walters say when he’d come?”

“No.”

“You look worried. Why are you worried?”

Samuel turned around to leave but stopped. “Did Father give you the Midnight Aurora?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You shouldn’t have come back.” He left the kitchen.

Samuel’s displeasure was hard to understand, and so was his question. Anyu finished smoking and returned to the workshop to work on her commissions. Isaac, she realized, wasn’t around.

Later, she was forging a ring when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up.

“Isaac, where have you been?”

“I couldn’t find Mr. Walters.” His voice was weak.

“Oh.”

“Mrs. Brown asked to see you in the vault.”

The cutlery shop looked the same, subdued, with the “Closed” sign hanging on the door. Inside, Anyu gave the coded answer to the Sikh guards and went down the staircase under the Goddess of Peace statue. Isaac waited outside on the street.

This was the second time Anyu had visited the vault since her return. Her first visit to the secret place had been brief but necessary—she had longed to see the egg; after the viewing, she had returned to the workshop to work.

The vault was quiet. She walked through the safely guarded room and came to face Mrs. Brown, who held a suitcase with twelve compartments filled with jewelry pouches. The light was dim, and the air smelled of Mrs. Brown’s fragrance, not cigarettes.

“I believe I have all you need here,” the British lady said, handing her the ledger and suitcase.

Anyu inspected the diamonds, counted them, and signed the ledger with her name. The Guild had been kind to her; without its support, she never would have completed the sets in such a timely manner.

“You surprise me, Miss Anyu. I’ve been impressed with the jewelry lines you’ve created.”

“I’ll be happy to make something for you, too, if you like.”

“Since when did you become so nice?”

It was a bristly question, but Anyu thought Mrs. Brown’s tone was pacified.

She still remembered what Bellefeuille had said about Mrs. Brown.

He had bitterly accused her of withholding her secret and defamed her by implying she lived a promiscuous lifestyle, but Anyu could see, beneath her cold demeanor, that Mrs. Brown was, in fact, a dignified woman with a discerning eye, and a confident leader.

“Why couldn’t Mr. Walters come to the store? ”

“Well, I was going to tell you. He disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“We’ve been looking for him for a month. But I’m befuddled. He’s deaf, he lives alone, he’s a discreet man, and his social circle is small. Only a few people in Shanghai are acquainted with him. Perhaps he got into trouble at the wrong time and the wrong place.”

Bellefeuille had mentioned Mr. Du was interested in Mrs. Brown, Anyu recalled. “Do you think Mr. Du has something to do with it?”

“The gangster leader? He usually stays away from foreigners, and the police at the Settlement keep him at arm’s length. But now that you mention it, I’ll have them look into that. We’ll find Mr. Walters.”

Mr. Walters worked for the Guild, and he was a crucial person linked to Mrs. Brown and the Workmasters Guild. “Are you safe, Mrs. Brown?”

She tilted her head. “Darling, what a question. Is there something you have to say?”

Anyu stared hard at the lady, then turned around to look at the treasures and the vault—it had taken the master jewelers six months to build it, Isaac had said; this place was even more secure than the generalissimo’s bedroom. “May I take a look at my egg?”

“Of course.” Mrs. Brown walked toward it, her heels clicking on the marble floor.

Anyu arrived in front of the shelf that held the crystal box.

She pressed the side of her signet ring to reveal the double-headed eagle and fitted it inside the crystal.

The case unfolded, and she took out the box that contained her egg.

“If you don’t mind, Mrs. Brown, I’d like to take it home with me. ”

The lady was silent for a moment. “It’s your egg.”

Anyu tucked the box into her coat pocket, and with one hand holding the suitcase, she headed toward the exit.

When she came out of the cutlery shop, it was raining. Isaac was waiting on a park bench with an umbrella.

She ducked under his umbrella. “I have all the diamonds we need for the Good Love line. And the egg. We must find a safe place in our shop and hide it.”

“What? Why did you take it?”

“I have to. She knows, but she didn’t tell me.”

“Knows what?”

“The Guild is compromised; there’s a leak.”