“I was hoping you could give me money so I could go to the jeweler and ask them to make another one,” Jessie says. “It doesn’t have to be exact. Nonny’s eyesight isn’t that great. If she doesn’t look closely, she won’t notice. And I’ll pay you back every penny, I swear.”

Blair laughs. “Oh, honey.”

Jessie assumes that means no. She bows her head. Her only hope now is that Exalta won’t notice the necklace missing for the next six weeks, at which point Jessie will go with Pick to Woodstock and never return.

“Wait right here,” Blair says. She lumbers across the room to the bookshelves and scans the titles. These books are mostly old. Some belonged to their mother growing up; some belonged to Nonny. Blair extracts a slim volume and presses it on Jessie.

“Read this,” she says. “Then you’ll know what to do.”

The book is The Necklace and Other Stories, by Guy de Maupassant.

Jessie takes the book back to Little Fair and lies across her bed to read it; she is out of options. The first story, “The Necklace,” is about a woman who wants to impress people at a fancy party and borrows an expensive necklace from an acquaintance—and then loses it. She finds a similar necklace in a jewelry store, and she and her husband sell everything they own and take out multiple loans to buy it. She gives this necklace to the acquaintance without mentioning that it’s a replacement, and the couple spend years in poverty, the wife doing scullery work in order to repay the loans. A decade later, she runs into the acquaintance and finds out that the necklace she lost was not valuable at all; the jewels were made of paste.

When Jessie finishes the story, she slams the book shut. This doesn’t help her because the necklace she lost wasn’t a fake. It was real, the real necklace that Nonny received from Gramps. Right? It had the heft of gold, and the diamond looked genuine. Maybe Blair thinks Nonny gave her a decoy to see if she was ready to care for a fine piece of jewelry.

That would be such a relief! But Jessie doubts it’s true.

She understands why Blair suggested the book. There’s only one correct course of action: tell Nonny the truth.

When is the right time? On their way to tennis lessons? On their way home from tennis lessons? In the evening, after Nonny has had a couple of gin and tonics? Jessie starts scrutinizing her grandmother’s moods. Every time she imagines telling Exalta the truth, she feels sick. She can’t do it.

Then, after the Fourth of July, Exalta spends a long stretch of time in the den watching Wimbledon on TV. Her favorite player, Rod Laver, wins his quarter-final match, then his semifinal match. And then he wins the final match against John Newcombe. He is the Wimbledon champion once again and Exalta claps her hands with glee. When Jessie sits down next to her on the sofa, Exalta turns to her and says, “Isn’t that marvelous?”

Jessie wants to blurt out the words Nonny, I lost the necklace. But she can’t bring herself to ruin Exalta’s good mood.

That evening after dinner, Jessie returns to Little Fair to find an envelope on the kitchen table. She creeps toward it as though it’s a dove that might fly away. What are the chances that someone found the necklace and left it in this envelope for Jessie? She squeezes her eyes closed then bravely opens them, thinking that whatever the envelope is, it will be fine.

It’s a letter, addressed to her here at All’s Fair.

The return address is Private Richard Foley, U.S. Army.

It’s from Tiger.

Jessie falls into a seat at the table and fingers the envelope; she wants to rip it open. She holds the letter in both hands and considers doing that—but somehow she knows she has to wait.

Wait until after she has told Nonny the truth.

The next morning, Jessie wakes up to pouring rain. She puts on her whites and pulls her hair into a ponytail, though clearly there’ll be no tennis today; just a run through the backyard to All’s Fair leaves her drenched. Nonny is sitting in the kitchen in the green kimono with the embroidered hibiscus that she got in Japan before World War II. She’s drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, which is unusual, but then Jessie sees she’s reading the sports page. There’s a large picture of Rod Laver.

“Tennis lessons canceled,” Exalta says. She gives Jessie a kind smile. “You can go on back to bed.”

If Jessie was looking for a sign, she has found it. Going back to Little Fair and burrowing under the covers as she listens to the patter of rain against the roof is a tempting choice—but it’s also a cowardly one.

Jessie takes a seat across from Exalta. “Nonny, there’s something I have to tell you.”

Her grandmother gazes at her with interest. Exalta isn’t wearing any makeup, so her wrinkles are revealed, and there are pouches under her blue eyes. Her lips are the same color as her skin. Her hair, which looks silvery blond when combed, now looks gray, the color of steel. Jessie tries to imagine her grandmother as a thirteen-year-old. Of course, that would have been in 1907, before most people had automobiles or flew on airplanes, before Russia was an enemy.

“I lost your necklace,” Jessie says. “The one Gramps gave you for your anniversary.”

Exalta blinks, and this split second while Exalta is processing what Jessie just said is the worst moment of Jessie’s life.

The silence that follows is equally awful. Jessie sees no choice but to fill it. “I took the necklace from your room. I wore it to dinner with Mom last Thursday.”

Exalta executes a nod so slight Jessie wonders if she has imagined it, but it’s followed by a change in Exalta’s expression. The corners of her mouth fall a fraction of an inch. She isn’t frantic at the news, or appalled. She is simply disappointed. Jessie has revealed herself to be as untrustworthy as Exalta feared. Not worthy of the necklace. Not worthy of the family.

“You took it without asking,” Exalta says. “Do you know what that’s called, Jessica?”

“Stealing,” Jessie says. A bolder, braver version of herself—Jessica Levin at eighteen, or even sixteen—might have pointed out that since Nonny had given her the necklace, it was hers, and by definition, she couldn’t steal something that already belonged to her. Nonny might then have pointed out that she had decreed that the necklace was for special occasions only—but dinner at the Mad Hatter qualified, right? Nonny hadn’t meant that Jessie had to wait for her high-school graduation or her wedding, had she?