I got my husband his dream watch for our tenth anniversary. All he got me was cheap perfume in a plastic bottle. I was so angry I tossed it aside and never used it. That was our last celebration. He died unexpectedly three weeks later. Today I was cleaning and the bottle fell. I froze. Inside, he was hiding a folded note and a thin gold chain.The note was short. He wrote that the perfume was a joke he had meant to explain over dinner, and that the real gift was the chain, which had belonged to his mother. He had been afraid I would say it was too much, so he had put it in the bottle and planned to tell me when I opened it. He never got the chance. The chain was still coiled at the bottom, the clasp closed the way he always closed things carefully.

I sat on the floor with the bottle in one hand and the note in the other. The watch I had given him was still in its box on the dresser. I had been so focused on the plastic and the price that I had not looked past either. The note said he was proud of the years we had already had and that he wanted the chain to be something I could keep even if he was not there to fasten it.

I put the chain on. It sat lighter than I expected. The perfume is still in the bathroom, empty now except for the note I folded back inside. I do not open the bottle often. When I do, the note is still there, and the chain is still around my neck. The last gift he gave me was the one I almost threw away.