Spadina streetcar, before first coffee.

Caucasian woman, early 30s, with a short brown razored bob, wearing a long black coat and amber ring.

October Horse, Colleen McCullough (Simon & Schuster)

Page 276:

The next moment he was lifted off his feet, squashed in an embrace that drove the breath from his lungs, the smell of her in his nostrils--ink, paper, stale wool, leather of book buckets. Porcia, Porcia, Porcia!

The ring is her mother's, plucked when she was ten from the box in the basement, The Laughing Buddha turned toward her, his perpetual grin mistaken for anguish, pain. She never stole again. But she did steal that once, turning the Buddha to face the drying ivy.