The box arrives on Saturday afternoon. It’s Jess’s day off, so I’m silently watching a group of customers browse when I notice movement outside the window: a bike messenger locking up his ride onto a telephone pole. He’s wearing a yellow-and-orange reflective vest over a dingy long-sleeved T-shirt and has a blue canvas backpack slung over one shoulder. I’m surprised to see him enter the shop.

“I have your delivery, miss,” he says, addressing me.

“I didn’t order anything,” I explain.

He scans the room. “This is Brooklyn Jewels?” He recites the address.

“Yes.”

“Then this is for you.”

He unzips his backpack, places a slick black box the size of a book on the glass counter, and hitches his backpack over his shoulder again. He’s gone before I can open the mysterious box. The customers, three young women who sound French, swivel to look at me. If they seemed like they were seriously going to make a purchase, maybe I’d hold off on opening it. But they’ve spent the past five minutes lingering, whispering among themselves, and declining my offers for help. One is holding a McDonald’s bag dotted with grease and another is furiously texting instead of actually looking at the jewels. They won’t mind if I open it. There’s no label or note, and my curiosity gets the better of me.

I lift the lid on the box to find a women’s watch. The band is delicate stainless steel and looks like a river of shiny silver pebbles. The face is black, elegantly oblong, and framed at the top and bottom with matching arcs of round-cut diamonds. Tiffany & Co.’s logo is etched beneath the Roman numeral for twelve. The last time I wore a watch was when my eighth-grade science teacher insisted we all have them in order to be on time for our field trip to the aquarium. It had a plastic band that made my wrist sweat. But this is different—this is like a work of art.

There’s a note inside the box, too. A man’s spiky handwriting on a white card reads: “Wear this tonight?—B.”

And so, of course, I do. A few hours later, Sophie comes in to take over my shift, and I scurry upstairs to shower, curl my hair into beachy waves, and slip into my dress—the same figure-hugging, emerald green gown I wore to my sister’s wedding. At the time, I had winced at the cost, even with Bloomingdale’s semiannual sale prices, but she’d begged me to buy it, insisting that I’d have plenty of opportunities to wear it again; tonight is the first time I’ve taken it out of my closet in three years.