When Carrie, my wife, and I first moved into our house, we were delighted to discover that in addition to all the usual house stuff there was a built in safe. I never thought about having a safe before, but this was an actual safe of gray spotted gunmetal hidden in a cabinet just off the floor of the study. I thrilled at the idea that we’d no longer hide my wife’s jewelry in an empty Chocolate Haagen Das quart container we stored in the back of our freezer.
The previous owner, an eighty-five year old woman whose husband had built the house in 1935, gave us the combination to the safe written in pencil on a small piece of spiral notepaper she had placed in a sealed envelope. Her son handed it to us at the closing before wishing us luck. I tucked the piece of paper in my wallet and forgot about it while we moved our stuff into our new home, but with that mostly done, it was time to open the safe and throw something in it. Because we could.
Flashlight in hand, I bent down and began to work the combination lock, following the instructions to the letter, or so I thought. After several failed attempts, Carrie pulled at my shoulder and told me to get out of the way so she could do it. I ignored her and after just four more tries, I heard the tell-tale “click” and looked up at Carrie. “Bingo,” I said.
I pulled open the heavy door, which was about the size of a dinner plate and reached inside. “Wow,” I said, putting my arm in up to my elbow, “this is a big safe. Plenty of room in here for our stuff.” As I pulled my hand out along the bottom of the safe I felt something move. “Wait a second, there’s something in here.” The flashlight revealed a small black velvet bag. I handed the bag to Carrie and she pulled out a diamond stick pin. “My, that’s a big one,” I said, looking at a diamond larger than a pea but smaller than a grape.
“A diamond this big, it’s probably fake,” Carrie said, “but we’d better tell the son that we found it. Maybe it’s a family heirloom or something.”
Carrie went into the bedroom to make the call, and after a minute of talking I heard her hang up. “What did he say?” I asked when she walked in.
“He said that his mother never had anything valuable like that and that it’s probably junk. He said we can keep it.”
I placed the stick pin in the black velvet bag and returned it to the safe.
* * *
We sold the house twenty five years later. Carrie was cleaning out the safe when she called out, “Hey, remember that diamond stickpin?” I walked in and she was holding it up to the light. “I still think it’s fake,” she said, “but I’m getting some of my jewelry appraised. I might as well take this with me.”
A few days later, she returned from the appraiser and told me the news: “Guess what? That stickpin? The diamond is real.”
“Really,” I said. “Worth anything?”
“He offered me $8,000.”
“Yay!” I said as I did an exuberant victory dance.
Carrie watched me dance for a few seconds, and then said, “Hang on there, John Travolta. You know we have to give it back, right?”
“What?” I stopped my dancing “We tried already twenty five years ago and they didn’t want it.” Carrie glared at me. I knew she was right, and of course we called the family and returned it. But for a brief moment, I reveled in the joy of discovering the buried treasure I’d been looking for since I was a kid.