THIRTY-SIX

“WE’LL have to catch up,” Sophia sincerely insisted as we finished our hug. “Promise?”

“Of course,” I assured her.

“And you—” She poked Matt’s hard chest. “How is it I never see you? You’re married to Breanne Summour now, right? Why don’t you go with her to Milan’s Fashion Week this spring? We three can get together and go to some great parties.”

Matt immediately looked uncomfortable. But before he could offer the awkward news of their split, Sal Arnold loudly cleared his throat.

“Might we postpone this little reunion? We have business to attend to.”

The frosty lawyer faced the nearest uniformed guard. “So, where is this box, please?”

The Lyons man double-checked the key in Sal Arnold’s hand against his itinerary sheet. He took five steps, pointed to a drawer no bigger than a toaster, and undid the top lock.

“Your key will open this one, sir.”

After the security team stepped outside to give us privacy, Sal Arnold slipped his key into the second lock and slid it open. A smaller steel container was nestled inside, and the lawyer used yet another key to open it. Then he lifted out the contents.

We stared in disappointment at a sixty-year-old Florsheim shoe box tied with butcher’s twine.

“May I?” Matt asked.

“Of course.” The lawyer handed it over. “This belongs to you and Ms. Campana now, whatever it may be.”

Matt shook the box. “It’s not very heavy.”

He carried it to a table in the center of the room. Sophia untied the knot and pulled off the lid. On a bed of ocean blue velvet sat a plain white envelope. Matt opened it and read the typed single-page letter inside, dated December 1956.

To our sons and daughters:

Six decades have passed, we are probably dead, and the world has most likely forgotten the treasure inside this box.

We now leave it in your trust, as a gift to a generation we will never know.

Divide the profits equally among yourselves and your children (our grandchildren) with the love, devotion, and blessings of their grandfathers.

Antonio Allegro & Gustavo Campana

The letter was signed by both men. A few words of another language were scrawled at the bottom—“ken eyne hore”—along with a final name, “A. Goldman,” followed by “mazl un brokhe,” but none of us wasted time questioning those notations. All eyes turned instead to the bundle of velvet inside the box.

“Open it, Matt!” Sophia urged.

It took a few painfully protracted seconds for Matt to unwind the velvet cloth. When he exposed its contents, Sal Arnold was the first to react.

“Holy cow!”

The rest of us gasped, or cried out—none louder than Sophia Campana.

“Madre di Dio! È L’Occhio del Gatto!”

Matt and I exchanged incredulous glances. Neither of us had ever seen a diamond so large or a setting so beautiful—except, of course, in Gustavo Campana’s photo of his late wife.

This was it, we realized, and I silently echoed Sophia’s cry.

Mother of God! It’s the Eye of the Cat!