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Colette thought often of the boy from Paris, the one with the yellow star who had shown her the hiding place in the courtyard.

He had not survived the war, but his words that day had stayed with her, imprinted on her soul.

One should always help if one can , he’d said.

It was a principle that had guided her life since then.

The morning after the detective’s visit, Colette woke before dawn after a mostly sleepless night, her stomach knotted with worry, and the visions from her nightmares—ghosts and demons stealing her mother and sister away—still dancing in front of her eyes.

What if Aviva couldn’t accept Colette for who she really was?

What if she didn’t understand that Colette had only ever tried to do good in the world?

And what if the detective came back, triggered by Colette’s unease during their interview?

What if he realized that she wasn’t simply a confused old lady, but rather a cunning thief whose arrest would close decades of open cases?

It felt to Colette as she got out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom that she was standing on a precipice, and she didn’t know yet whether the ground would stay solid beneath her feet or would crumble to dust, sending her plunging into the deep unknown.

She washed her face, made herself a cup of coffee, and got dressed, taking care with her makeup as she always did, adding her signature red lipstick and black mascara, though she expected no visitors today.

She was just preparing some eggs for breakfast when her doorbell rang.

She looked at the clock on the wall, her heart hammering.

It was barely seven o’clock in the morning, and nothing good arrived at one’s door so early.

Could it be the detective, returning to confront her with evidence?

Her throat started to close, but then she realized that it could equally be Aviva, here to say that she’d thought about Colette’s words overnight and that she understood.

She forced herself to breathe normally as she hurried to peer through the peephole.

But it was neither the detective nor Aviva standing there. It was Marty, his face oddly pale. She wasn’t sure what unsettled her more—his strange expression, or the fact that he was here at all.

“Marty?” she asked after she’d opened the door, just in case she was seeing things. They always stayed away from meeting anywhere except the store—or at a neutral location such as a restaurant downtown—just in case he was ever followed. “Are you all right?”

“I need to talk to you,” he said, not answering the question, and her stomach began to churn.

“If this is about me being careless at the benefit, I’ve already gotten an earful from Aviva, not to mention the detective who dropped by yesterday.”

“What?” He looked horrified enough that she knew instantly that wasn’t what he was here to discuss. “There was a detective here?”

He turned to scan the street, and Colette did the same. What if the detective was out there watching? But neither could see any vehicle that looked like an unmarked police car.

“I don’t think he knew anything,” Colette said as Marty turned back to her, his eyebrows raised. “He showed me mug shots of three known thieves and asked if I’d seen any of them at the benefit.”

Marty’s eyebrows went up even further. “And I assume you pointed one out.”

“Of course.”

Marty laughed, his face relaxing. “Poor bastard.”

Colette shrugged. “He shouldn’t have gotten himself nabbed in the first place.”

Marty shook his head, the smile falling from his face. “Look, kid, I’m not here to talk about the benefit. It’s something else. Can I come in?”

Colette nodded and moved aside, closing the door behind him after he’d stepped over the threshold.

Her nerves were jangling, but she busied herself with pouring Marty a cup of coffee and fixing it just the way he liked it—cream and two sugars.

He had always been the sweet to her bitter, the light to her dark.

“So?” she asked, trying to keep the worry out of her voice as she handed him his coffee. “What is it, Marty? Don’t tell me you’re in some kind of trouble.”

“No, nothing like that.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve found it.”

She looked at him blankly. “Found what?”

“The bracelet, Colette. I found the bracelet you’ve been looking for all these years.”

She was certain she’d misunderstood. “ Which bracelet, Marty?” She needed to hear him say it.

He held up a copy of the glossy Boston Monthly magazine, folded open to a story about an upcoming jewelry exhibit. “ The bracelet, Colette.”

The world around Colette seemed to go still.

Marty continued to speak, but it sounded as if his voice was coming from very far away.

There, on the page of the magazine, was the bracelet she’d last seen in August 1942, just before her mother sewed it into the lining of little Liliane’s nightgown, and less than forty-eight hours before the Gestapo showed up at her family’s door.

Colette grabbed the magazine from Marty and stared.

She had been looking for the bracelet for seventy-six years, but the longer a piece was missing, the smaller the chances of its return.

She had come to believe that she would never see it again, and yet here it was, its diamonds sparkling even in the full-color photograph from the magazine spread, its shape unmistakable.

The caption described its design as “an abstract swirl, or perhaps a pair of flowers,” and for a moment, she could clearly hear Liliane’s voice saying, It’s a blob.

But Colette knew that it was half of a whole, a broken butterfly with only one wing.

“I have always thought,” she said carefully, hearing the tremble in her own voice, “that if I found the bracelet, I would find the person who took my sister.” The words still hurt to say.

“Now’s your chance,” Marty said quietly.

“But don’t you see?” She looked up at him. “It’s too late. It’s been seventy-six years, Marty. Whoever took Liliane would be long dead by now. The bracelet may be here, but the answers won’t be.”

Marty reached to pull her into a hug and spoke gently as she laid her head on his shoulder and wept.

“You don’t know that,” he said. “ Someone owns this bracelet. Someone knows where it came from. Maybe the monster who took your sister made a deathbed confession to a son or daughter. Maybe they can be persuaded to tell you what they know.”

Colette sniffled and pulled away. He was selling a pipe dream, and she wanted so badly to buy it. “Where is the bracelet, Marty?”

“The Diamond Museum.” Colette knew the place; it was a small, seasonal museum just a few blocks from Marty’s store, housed in what had once been an opulent private home, built in the 1790s and donated a decade ago by a wealthy jewel collector named James Franklin Cash III.

He had left explicit instructions in his will asking that his soaring historic house be turned into a museum that celebrated the gemstones he had loved all his life.

“It’s in an exhibit on early-twentieth-century European jewelry that’s opening in a few days,” he added.

“But where did it come from?” Colette whispered, more to herself than to Marty. “How did the bracelet get here? Where has it been all these years?”

“We’ll find out, Colette,” Marty said, pulling her back into his arms. “I promise you, we’ll find out.”

After he’d finished his cup of coffee, Marty offered to stay, but Colette needed time to think, and besides, if the detective returned, having a jewel broker on hand wouldn’t exactly help her case.

Marty departed with regret etched across his face, leaving the magazine with her.

After he was gone, she read and reread the brief article that accompanied the picture, but it told her very little; there was no indication of where the bracelet had originated.

As with previous exhibits at the Diamond Museum , the article said, most of the pieces are on loan from private collections in deals secured by museum director Lucas O’Mara.

She’d never met O’Mara, though his name was familiar; the Boston Globe had run a nice feature on him last year, and Marty had mentioned him a few times in glowing terms. O’Mara was in his mid-forties, and he’d had a career as an engineer early on before changing course and enrolling at the Savannah College of Art and Design to study jewelry design.

And while he’d never made it as a professional designer, he had been hired as the founding director of the museum after a short stint at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Now, he curated rotating collections of jewels in partnership with the New England Diamond Alliance.

Instead of making jewels, O’Mara had figured out how to celebrate them.

Surely this O’Mara was the kind of person who understood just how much jewels could mean to a family’s history.

Could he be the key to finding out where the bracelet had been all these years?

Could it be as simple as approaching him to ask?

But of course, if she questioned O’Mara herself, it would be impossible for her to later steal the bracelet without being at the top of the suspect list, if it came to that.

And she couldn’t send Marty in to do it; as a jewelry broker, asking questions about a piece that subsequently went missing would be career suicide—and it would risk exposing decades worth of illegal jewel sales.

But then something occurred to her. What about Aviva? Aviva could question O’Mara without raising suspicion, especially if she could frame it as part of a mission for the Holocaust center. With his walls down, maybe he’d admit what he knew.

Before she could second-guess herself, she picked up the phone and tried Aviva, first on her cell, and then, when she didn’t answer, at her office.