The bell over the door was the same. The velvet trays were the same. The fluorescent tube still hummed.

The man behind the counter had gotten grayer, and when I said what I’d come about, he didn’t recognize me until I said gold locket, oval, engraved, about two and a half years ago, forty dollars, and then his face changed and he said, “You had a boy with you outside in the car.”

“That’s me,” Nolan said.

His name was Emil Petrosian, and he’d run that counter for thirty-one years, and he told us straight out, before I could even hope, that the piece had gone to auction after the ticket expired.

Ninety days, then a state waiting period, then a lot sale in Sevierville. He remembered it specifically, he said, because of the engraving.

“You remember the engraving?”