All day she’d been distracted by the shiny trinket on her left hand. She tried not to look at it, tried to ignore the tiny dots of light sprinkled like sugar crystals on the wall whenever the slimmest shaft of sunlight grazed the surface of the sparkling stone. But her eyes wandered from her work as her hand twisted and turned imperceptibly to obtain the maximum potential for brilliance. The flawless diamond in the platinum setting matched the light in her eyes today. For once in her life, Margie felt like a princess.

The whispered remarks from her coworkers at the coat rack, in the coffee room, and at the copier ceased whenever she approached. She’d never mentioned a boyfriend to anyone in the office, not even so much as a lunch date. Plain little Margie, ignored every other day by her work mates, basked in their surreptitious attention. Their curiosity about the sparkling object proved more than they could bear by two o’clock.

“Margie, where’d ya get that giant rock?”

“Humph, wouldn’t you like to know?”

Margie just hoped she could pay for it.

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