October came in gold, the whole shore going over at once the way it did some years — the maples holding their color for a week and then letting it go, the lake taking the fallen leaves in along the reeds, the oak at the edge of the yard holding its first autumn the way it had held its first season, in full, the whole tree gold and standing in the gold light like a thing presenting its work. Aaron stood over it with his coffee in the cool mornings and did not say anything, the way you say nothing to a thing that has kept every appointment.
The box came on a Thursday.
It came the way the boxes came now — the plain box, the chain's marks on it, no ceremony — and Aaron knew it before Sophie did, because she was in the study with the design pages, and he carried it into the kitchen and set it on the clear table and stood looking at it until she came to the door and stopped.
"Don't," she said. "I want to open it without you looking at me."
