Meryem had laughed, thinking he’d just lost his smokes. He had never told her. They had married, lived a full life, and eventually, she had left him for a different kind of blue horizon.

He walked toward the ferry docks, the Bosphorus mirroring that exact, impossible blue as the sun began to dip. He remembered Meryem sitting on the upper deck of the Paşabahçe steamer. She had been wearing a dress that matched the pack he held in his shaking hands that evening.

He had intended to propose that night. He had hidden the ring inside the gold-foiled interior of the No. 1 pack, thinking it a clever, blue-blooded surprise. But the wind had been high, and a sudden lurch of the ferry had sent the open pack skittering across the deck. Before he could grab it, the blue box—and the diamond within—had vanished into the churning, sapphire waves.

"Another pack of the usual, Selim Abi?" the shopkeeper asked, reaching for a modern brand with its grim health warnings.

He dropped the empty, vintage box into the water. It bobbed for a second, a tiny blue ship, before the Bosphorus claimed its own once again.