And now this.

Johannes thrust the bag at her. “Please-open it.”

“But, I…”

She couldn’t bring herself to argue. Her uncle looked so eager, even desperate. Unprepossessing as his gift seemed, it meant a great deal to him, and with the death of his wife Ann a few years ago and no children of his own, Juliana guessed he was a lonely man. For the first time, she felt the weight of being the last of the Peperkamps. She could indulge him.

With the towel around her neck, she stuck her hand in the bag and pulled out a heavy object wrapped in faded purple velvet. Her uncle’s water blue eyes glittered as he urged her on. She unwrapped the velvet. In a moment, she held in her hand a large, cool rock. But her pulse had quickened, and she lifted her eyes to her old uncle, licking her lips, which had suddenly gone dry.

“Uncle Johannes, this isn’t-tell me this isn’t a diamond.”

The old man shook his head solemnly. “I can’t do that, Juliana.”

“But it’s too big to be a diamond!”

“It’s what we call rough. It has never been touched by a cutter’s tool.”

Juliana quickly wrapped up the stone and stuck it back in the bag. For four hundred years, diamonds had consumed the Peperkamps. They’d entered the trade in the late sixteenth century when Jewish diamond merchants had fled the Spanish Inquisition and arrived in more tolerant Amsterdam. The Peperkamps were Gentiles. Why they’d taken up one of the few trades open to Jews-and dominated by them, even today-remained a mystery. But it wasn’t one that interested Juliana. She considered diamonds ordinary and bland. Even ones like the Breath of Angels, which her Uncle Johannes had cut and was now in the Smithsonian, bored her. An exquisite stone, everyone said. She supposed it was, for a diamond.