The Secret of the Nightingale Palace by Dana Sachs

Goldie didn’t understand the meaning of penance. As a consequence, rather than taking offense, she thought that Anna was offering support. “Exactly,” she said.
    Sadie gave up. Anna nudged her sister’s leg with her foot under the table. She appreciated her concern, but she felt inspired by the notion of chauffeuring her grandmother and a portfolio of Japanese art across the continent in a Rolls-Royce. Anna had never driven anything nicer than her mother’s Volvo, had never taken a car trip of more than a few hundred miles, and had no confidence in her ability to get along with Goldie for even a day, let alone on a journey that would last several weeks. But still she felt solidly committed to the project. Compared with the worry that Anna received from the rest of her family, Goldie’s indifference offered surprising relief.
    Melora appeared with their dinner plates stretching ostentatiously down her arm. Sadie and Goldie’s roast chicken, with its crispy skin and buttery sheen, looked like the stellar result of an exam in French cooking, its aroma forming a rich and meaty cloud above the table. Their eyes turned to Anna’s duck, a set of brown slabs spread across a plate. “No one orders the duck here,” Goldie said.
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    It was in the shuffle of putting on their jackets and picking up their purses that Anna remembered Ford’s ring. What had seemed an hour earlier like a brilliant burst of problem solving, now just seemed wacky. “I have to go to the bathroom one more time,” she said, already rushing down the stairs ahead of the others. What had she been thinking?
    Hurrying through the dim, velvety restaurant filled with clinking glasses and muted conversation, Anna pictured the ring, dangling on the edge of the sill. A gust of wind might blow it off. Was it raining tonight? Could a buildup of moisture cause it to slide over the edge? And hadn’t she considered the window of the apartment five feet across the air shaft? Any half-observant neighbor could spot Ford’s ring and snag it. Anna could still appreciate the romance of having her husband’s ring perched for eternity on a windowsill at JoJo, but she also knew that she’d be devastated to return here one day and find that it had disappeared.
    Fortunately, the bathroom was empty. She stepped out of her shoes, dropped the toilet seat, and hoisted herself up one more time. Cautiously, she reached toward the window and slid her fingers along the edge of the sill, aware that she could dislodge the ring herself if she moved too quickly. She felt her finger go over the edge of the ring, then she tipped it up and slid it immediately back onto her thumb. Just as she was pulling her hand inside, though, she felt something tear her skin. She had scraped it along the edge of a shard of wood sticking out of the sill. Looking down at her hand, she saw blood welling up on the muscly part of her palm below Ford’s ring.
    Just then the door opened, and Melora the waitress stood looking up at her. “Oops, sorry,” she stammered, too momentarily taken by the sight of Anna standing on the toilet seat to close the door again behind her.
    Anna stepped down. “Do you have a Band-Aid or something?” At the sink, she rinsed her hand, then patted it with a paper towel. The wound wasn’t much more than a scratch, but it was messy.
    Melora stooped down and rummaged in the cabinet below the sink. “We keep some first aid stuff down here.” Eventually she stood up with a box of bandages in her hand, tore one open, and carefully applied it to the cut.
    â€œI guess you think this is kind of weird,” Anna said.
    The waitress shook her head. “I’ve been doing this job for fifteen years. At this point, standing on a toilet seat with a bloody hand seems pretty tame.” Her weary expression offered a complete contrast to the perky enthusiasm she expressed in the dining room. She looked