“It’s supposedly five hundred years old,” Garland added. “I don’t know for sure if it’s that old, of course, but it’s old.”

My mother nodded, now looking sufficiently impressed. “Thank you,” she said.

My father looked pleased.

“And if you’ll permit me,” Garland said, “another small token for Miss Dixon.”

He handed me the other small gift-wrapped box.

I slipped off the pretty paper neatly and then, holding the box in my left hand, opened it. My mother was practically breathing down my neck. I plucked out a hairpin set with six freshwater pearls and what looked like rose-cut diamonds.

My mother gasped. “Are those real?”

“Oh yes,” Garland said nonchalantly. “It comes from Scotland. It was my mother’s.”

My mother looked up with eyes so wide I thought she would rupture her lids. “Your mother’s?”

“She had so many nice things, beautiful things. I think leaving them stuffed in drawers does them and my mother’s memory an injustice. After all, a beautiful thing is not beautiful if it’s never seen. Wouldn’t you agree?” He glanced at me and then smiled at my mother.

“Oh yes,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, looking at the pin and not him.

“Let’s go to my study while the ladies prepare our dinner,” my father told Garland.

“Thank you,” he said, and followed him.

My mother turned her statuette slowly and then looked at me as if she wanted me to tell her to keep it.

“Surely no one you know has anything like that in her home, Mother.”

“Um,” she said. She looked more confused than anything.

I gazed after my father and Garland.

“I just don’t know where to put such a thing. Still, if it’s anything like he described, people will be quite impressed.”

“Maybe your friends won’t. They are not exposed to such things.”

“How would you know that? Don’t become snobby, Corrine.”

“Of course not, Mother. You’re right. How could they not be impressed?”

“Um,” she said, still turning the statuette in her hands. “From what he said, he must have spent a pretty penny on it.”

“It would be impolite to ask how much,” I said, and she looked up sharply.

“Of course it would.”

I smiled, and she pulled in the corners of her mouth. My correcting her when it came to social graces was not a flag to fly high in this house. I looked toward the library. Was Garland as sweet and generous as he appeared right now, or was he far better than I was at maneuvering people to do whatever it was he wanted? Or had my father put the fear of hell and brimstone into his heart, and he was here to first be forgiven?