Arthur looked at his dirty fingernails, felt the lingering warmth of the coffee, and watched the tide come in. For the first time in a decade, he wasn't thinking about his portfolio or the dusting requirements of his Ming vase collection. He was just... there. "You didn't buy me anything," Arthur said softly.
Arthur P. Henderson III lived in a house where the walls were made of rare Italian marble and the toilet brushes were—unnecessarily, he admitted—dipped in 24-karat gold.
"I have the gift," she announced, sliding a small, suspiciously light envelope across his mahogany desk.
At 4:00 PM, they sat at the end of the pier. The sun was dipping low, turning the water into a sheet of hammered copper. "So," Maya said, "where's the gift?"
Arthur realized the hardest thing to give someone who has everything isn't an object—it's a
His niece, Maya, a broke college student with a sharp mind and a dead-empty bank account, was the only one who didn’t look terrified of his birthday.
"Exactly," Maya smiled. "I figured you had enough 'things.' I thought you might be running low on ."