“Maybe,” he said with a mischievous smile.

I drove home with the drawing on the passenger seat.

For the first time in years, I stopped at a small shop and bought a living evergreen in a pot.

I placed it by the window, hung Rose’s paper star on a branch, and set Elias’s drawing on the mantel.

There were no diamonds beneath that tree.

I had never been richer.

PART 23