On finding the opaline vase

The estate sale was advertised on a piece of cardboard, taped to a lamppost in Bonnieux, written in marker. SAMEDI 9H — MAISON DE FAMILLE. Nothing more.

I arrived at eight forty-five. The garden was full of folded chairs and women with empty totes. I walked through every room twice before I found the vase, in a back bedroom, on a shelf with three of its lesser cousins. It was the only one with that very specific milky-blue cast you can’t fake.

The owner’s daughter said her mother bought it on her honeymoon in Murano in 1962 and never put a single flower in it. Sixty years on a shelf. I asked if she was sure she wanted to sell it. She said her mother had hated it, actually — said it was too pretty, too precious, the wrong shape for any flower she ever liked. So it sat.