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“I’m up most mornings before six, dear,” Colette said after she and Aviva had hugged hello and they were walking down the hall to her kitchen. “You could have come earlier.”

Aviva yawned and Colette noticed the dark circles under her eyes. “I almost called you last night, actually, but I figured you might be asleep.”

Colette harumphed, because back when Aviva had lived with her after Rachel’s death some twenty years earlier, they had stayed up to all hours, watching old black-and-white movies, escaping to worlds that were less painful than the one they inhabited.

“What makes you think I was sleeping?” Colette asked tartly.

Aviva bit her lip. “Um…”

“You can say it. You think I’m old.”

“I would never say that.” Aviva looked uncomfortable.

Colette cracked a smile. “Fine, you win. I was asleep on the couch before nine. I think my movie-marathon days are in the past.” She could still close her eyes on the sofa sometimes and imagine the shape of Aviva there beside her, breathing in and out in the darkness, her face illuminated as she disappeared to Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart or to St. Louis with Judy Garland.

“Do you think you could manage one more late night?” Aviva asked as Colette put a kettle on to boil and scooped grinds into her French press. It was the only way she made coffee, dark and smooth and strong.

Colette’s heart thudded, for she suspected that this had to do with the reemergence of the bracelet into the world. “Are we going clubbing?” she asked lightly.

Aviva laughed. “Clubbing?”

The kettle was ready, and Colette removed it from the heat and poured it into the French press, drawing a deep breath in as the scent of coffee filled the kitchen.

“I was a regular at Studio 54, I’ll have you know,” she said.

She’d been in her late forties when the disco opened in 1977, but many of the celebrities who came to be associated with the club were older than she.

It also became a popular hangout for people obsessed with social climbing.

The dance floor there throbbed with some two thousand guests each night, and Colette loved getting lost among them, looking for marks she had researched in advance, slipping bracelets and watches from the wrists of people who would assume they’d lost them, and then checking into the Drake Hotel before the sun came up.

“Sure, Studio 54,” Aviva said, smiling at Colette, who simply shrugged.

Even Aviva, who knew her too well to underestimate her, saw her as nothing more than an old woman who couldn’t possibly have led an exciting life before she came along.

“No, I wasn’t thinking clubbing. I was thinking maybe an invitation to the opening night of the exhibit at the Diamond Museum. ”

Colette dropped the spoon she was holding, sending it clattering to the floor.

As she bent to pick it up, waving off Aviva’s help, she blinked a few times, hard, trying to get control of herself and of her shaking hands.

By the time she straightened and began to stir the coffee grinds in the French press, she was trembling only a little.

“So you’ve been there?” she asked, keeping her voice even.

“Colette,” Aviva said, “I saw the bracelet.”

Colette forced herself to continue through the motions of making Aviva’s coffee.

She slowly depressed the plunger knob, watching the black liquid clarify through the glass.

“I see.” She busied herself with plucking two mugs from the cabinet and pouring the coffee so that she wouldn’t have to meet Aviva’s gaze.

“Was anyone at the museum able to tell you where the bracelet came from?”

Aviva retrieved cream from the refrigerator, poured a long drizzle into her coffee, and stirred. “Only that the owner is from France. I met with the museum director, who wasn’t very forthcoming. Apparently he’s not a fan of people showing up asking awkward questions.”

“Yes, well, he’s going to have to get used to it,” Colette said.

Aviva peered at Colette suspiciously over the rim of her mug. “You can’t steal it, Colette.” The girl could apparently read minds now. “Not from a museum. Not from a man who seemed decent and kind.”

“I wouldn’t really be taking it from him,” Colette said, hedging.

“But Lucas would be on the hook for it,” Aviva said.

“Lucas?” Colette asked. “You’re already on a first-name basis?” That boded poorly, too, as did the way Aviva’s cheeks got just a bit pinker at the question.

“He invited us to the opening tonight,” Aviva said, recovering. “I thought it might be an opportunity for you to get a look at the bracelet and to ask some questions. They’ll sound less suspicious coming from you than from me.”

“Because I’m an old lady?” Colette asked sweetly, taking a sip of her bitter coffee.

“ Because I’ve already told him I’m writing an article about the exhibit,” Aviva corrected. “But if you don’t want to go…”

“Of course I do,” Colette said firmly, forcing herself to take another sip of her coffee. She would need all the stamina she could muster. “What time do we leave?”

Aviva left after finishing her cup of coffee, perhaps sensing that Colette desperately needed some time to herself.

And Colette did need that, of course, but instead of using it to get ahold of her runaway emotions, she spent it getting even more worked up as she googled the name of the museum director.

Perhaps she would have to come clean about why the bracelet meant so much to her if she had any hope of learning its secrets.

First, though, she needed to know who she was dealing with. Where did O’Mara’s loyalties lie?

But an online search turned up only a handful of glowing profiles of Lucas O’Mara—some featuring photographs. Colette could see how he’d made the typically unflappable Aviva blush, what with that square jaw and deep green eyes.

Fine , she thought with some annoyance as she closed a window including yet another image of the handsome museum director.

Let’s see what skeletons are hiding in your closet.

But after entering his name into all the databases she had access to, including the ones that would tell her if he had ever been arrested for a crime or named in a lawsuit, she still came up empty.

Surely it wasn’t possible that the man was clean as a whistle.

Perhaps he just excelled at covering his tracks.

Finally, she called Marty. “What do you know about the man who runs the Diamond Museum?” she asked.

“Good morning to you, too, Colette,” Marty said, sounding amused. “Lucas O’Mara?”

“Yes.” She didn’t have time for pleasantries; this was too important. “Do you know him?”

“We’ve met a handful of times, yes. Nice boy.”

“He’s in his forties, Marty.”

“That’s still a child to you and me.”

Colette couldn’t argue with that. She could be O’Mara’s mother, maybe even his grandmother. “So who’s he in bed with? The Irish mob? The Italians? A European jewel-fencing ring?”

Marty laughed. “Last I checked, his only allegiance was to his daughter.”

“His daughter?”

“Mindy or Millie or something like that. Off to college now, I think. The mom died a few years ago, when the daughter was in high school.”

“Oh.” That stopped Colette in her tracks. A widower who had been raising a daughter alone? She couldn’t steal from someone from whom life had already stolen so much. Her heart sank.

“He’s aboveboard, kiddo,” Marty said, an apology in his voice. He knew exactly what she’d been asking, and that he’d just thrown up an impassible roadblock. “Though I do think the amount of pomade he uses in his hair borders on criminal.”

Colette laughed, despite herself. “Marty?” she asked after a moment. “What do I do if I can’t take the bracelet back?”

“You want me to give O’Mara a call? Jeweler to jeweler?” Marty asked, and Colette almost dropped the phone.

“Absolutely not!” She’d sounded sharper than intended. “What I meant to say is that Aviva is taking me to the exhibition’s opening tonight. I can speak with him myself. I’d appreciate if you could continue to keep my confidence.”

“Of course.” Marty hesitated. “Are you all right, Colette? I mean, with the bracelet turning up after all these years…”

“Certainly,” Colette snapped, resenting the implication that she was ever anything less than fully in control. “Goodbye, Marty.”

“Good luck tonight, kid.” He sounded sad as he hung up.

Colette set her phone on the counter and stared at it for a few minutes, wishing it could tell her what to do.

She felt antsy, itchy, her fingers twitching of their own accord as if they wanted to be anywhere but here.

She clasped her hands to still them, but she could feel it, the urge in her bones to steal.

Her mother had spent so much of her short life trying to do good for others, as had her uncle Leo, who took her in after the war.

Colette had tried so hard to follow in the footsteps they laid out for her, to honor her family tradition, but did it all come to naught if she failed at this most important test?

Over the years, she had anonymously funded women’s shelters, drug rehab centers, food banks, children’s hospitals, cancer research, nursing homes for Holocaust survivors, and programs for foster children who had aged out of the system.

She knew she had brought honor to her family, though she had failed at producing an heir to carry on.

Robin Hood’s centuries-old bloodline would die with her, but perhaps it was time.

Colette had always believed if she had a chance to get some form of justice for her murdered sister, it would make up, in part, for her failings.

She would give anything to turn the clock back to that terrible night, but that was impossible.

Would finding out where the bracelet had been all these years clear her conscience, or just make things more complicated?

Colette shook her head. Enough of that. The only way to cure a mood like this was to steal.

Colette had had her eye on Franklin Gorich for more than a year now.

She rarely stole from someone without months and months of research, to ensure that she was taking only from people who deserved it, whose choices had led them to the kind of justice her family had spent hundreds of years dispensing.

She hadn’t planned to move so soon, but she knew exactly where she would find Gorich this time of day, and at the very least, he’d be wearing his Rolex Submariner. Today called for the salve of a satisfying score, and Gorich was the closest target.

Gorich had been indicted last year for his role in a scheme to bribe a United States senator.

The senator had been convicted of taking payoffs in exchange for approving the sale of arms to a foreign government, but Gorich, the go-between, had cut a deal in exchange for his testimony.

He had gone back to his job at the high-powered PR firm he co-owned without missing a beat, and the firm had lost only a handful of clients as a result.

As Colette waited outside his office building on Beacon Street, her fingers itched with purpose. He’d almost certainly be emerging soon for the short walk over to Parker’s, where he ordered the clam chowder and baked Boston scrod every Tuesday.

He exited his building at 11:50 on the dot, briefcase in his left hand, cell phone in his right.

He was so busy FaceTiming with someone on his screen that he crossed a lane of traffic without realizing he’d nearly been hit.

Colette rolled her eyes as she followed a half block behind him, but she had to admit, his complete lack of regard for anyone else made her task exponentially easier.

At the restaurant, he sat at his usual table near the window, not bothering to lower either his voice or the volume of his phone’s speaker.

Colette sat at the bar and pretended to read a menu while Gorich ordered his usual and then—as she knew he would—got up from the table to use the bathroom.

She, too, excused herself from the bar with a polite smile, telling the bartender she’d be back in a moment after she’d used the ladies’ room.

She sauntered slowly toward the restrooms and was just in time to collide with Gorich as he made his way back to his table a moment later, once again absorbed in a loud FaceTime call on his phone.

The force of their collision knocked the phone out of his hands, and, as she had counted on, his annoyance about having his call interrupted outweighed everything else.

“Watch it, lady,” he barked in her general direction, without bothering to give her even a glance, which worked out just fine, because it meant he didn’t see her at all as she feigned a momentary injury, which allowed her to lean on him long enough to slip the Rolex from his wrist as he bent to retrieve his phone.

“Some old lady ran into me,” he explained to the person on his phone screen as he brushed her off and returned to his seat.

Colette shook her head, pocketed his Rolex, continued to the restroom, and returned to the bar a few moments later for a glass of white wine.

Leaving early would only make her look suspicious, but what thief in her right mind would stay for a drink after ripping off a ten-thousand-dollar watch?

She observed from the bar as Gorich continued to talk on his phone, berated his waitress, and finally departed after leaving the same meager tip he always did—five dollars on a $55 meal.

Colette, on the other hand, left a 25 percent tip on a $16 tab and slipped out, her head down.

As usual, her age acted as a cloak of invisibility.

Later, when Gorich realized his watch was gone, not a soul would remember her face.

She had her doubts that he would even put two and two together and realize the old lady from outside the bathroom might have been the one to relieve him of his property.

In the meantime, though, the proceeds from his watch would fund another few months of assistance for families who used the Boston Food Pantry—and Colette could hold off the nightmares for another evening or two before they came roaring back in, like they always did.