“Perhaps you should have them, Alice.” And David held them out to her, dangling between finger and thumb in the firelight. I saw Priss smile innocently at the gesture.

“I don’t take fake.” Alice swung round and plopped down in a chair pouting, but David made no move toward her. I watched as he lay the necklace down on the mantelpiece. He did it deliberately; the necklace was unclasped and he laid it down in a line, adjusting it till it was quite straight.

The evening was a little subdued. Perhaps they were tired. Were they happy? Bored? I can hardly place my friends in the room, nor our hosts, nor Priss or Zack. In my memory, I can barely make them out. My attention was elsewhere.

Again, I was the first to go up. The bed was stone cold. I lay on top of it in my clothes, listening and waiting. The curtains were open and when I looked out it was upon a dream world, the velvet night, the nacreous glow of the moon. Beyond the pane, flakes of snow were rising on an updraft so that it gave me the peculiar feeling that time was running backward.

As I told the police, it was about one a.m. when I went back down. You forget how it is to move quietly, to creep. I was out of practice and my ankle was still throbbing from earlier. The whole house seemed to creak at my footfall. The dark was total, and once I had let go the bannister, I had to walk like the cartoon image of a sleepwalker, my arms stretched out before me. The door to the library was open and since there were embers still smoldering in the hearth, there was the merest murky, reddish glow by which I found my way to the fireplace. The necklace was there, on the mantelpiece where he had left it. My hand closed over it and a piece of the darkness detached itself, stepped forward. A hand closed over mine.

It was David, of course. We stood like that for a little bit. At least I can say that on this occasion he touched me first. His hand over mine, mine clutching the necklace. But after that first touch, I have no defense. My mind went dead, like a phone line had been unplugged. Something else was taking over. He smelled the same, and his skin was warm and I could feel under my fingertips the stubble coming through. David put an arm around me and drew me in, chest to chest, cheek to cheek. A spreading shudder. Still holding the diamonds, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him. It had always been gentle between us, but it was not so gentle now. There wasn’t any of me left that didn’t want him. Still, I didn’t let the necklace loose from my fist, not through any of it, not until the very end when I had to let it go, to press down both of my hands on the small of his back, such was the moment.