My eyes began to sting as I considered the odds of finding this object in the riverbed: a historical artifact, probably once belonging to a person of little significance, someone whose name wasn’t recorded in a textbook, but whose life was fascinating all the same. This was precisely what I found so enchanting about history: centuries might separate me from whomever last held the vial, but we shared in the exact sensation of its cool glass between our fingers. It felt as though the universe, in her strange and nonsensical way, meant to reach out to me, to remind me of the enthusiasm I once had for the trifling bits of bygone eras, if only I could look beneath the dirt that had accumulated over time.

It dawned on me then that since touching down at Heathrow this morning, I hadn’t cried once over James. And wasn’t that exactly why I ran off to London, anyway? To cut away, if only for a few minutes, the malignant mass of grief? I fled to London to breathe and that was damn well what I’d done, even if some of that time had been spent in a veritable mud pit.

I knew that keeping the vial was exactly what I should do. Not only because I felt a subtle attachment to whomever this vial once belonged, but because I’d found it on a mudlarking tour that wasn’t even part of the original, fated itinerary with James. I’d come to this riverbed alone. I’d stuck my hands into the muddy crevice of two rocks. I’d staved off tears. This glass object—delicate and yet still intact, somewhat like myself—was proof that I could be brave, adventurous, and do hard things on my own. I dropped the vial into my pocket.

The clouds above us continued to build, and lightning struck somewhere to the west of the bend in the river. Bachelor Alf called us over to him. “Sorry, folks,” he hollered, “but we can’t go on after a lightning strike. Let’s pack it up. We’ll be back out tomorrow, same time, if anyone wants to join again.”

Pulling off my gloves, I walked over to Bachelor Alf. Now that I’d grown somewhat accustomed to my surroundings, I couldn’t help a sense of disappointment about the tour ending early. After all, I’d just had my first real find, and I felt a growing curiosity and the urge to keep looking. I could see how such a pastime might become addictive.

“If you were me,” I asked Alf, “where would you go to learn more about the vial?” Even though it didn’t have the markings Alf expected on a typical apothecary vial, perhaps I could still glean some information about it—especially given the tiny animal etched onto the side, which I thought resembled a bear walking on all fours.