Engraved along the edge were the words “Whitaker & Sons, 1987” followed by a serial number and a name: Edmund Whitaker. The homeless man from outside the music store had not always lived on the street. Years earlier, he had owned a small jewelry business with his father. After his wife died and medical bills consumed most of what he had, his life slowly unraveled. The gold bar was one of the few valuable things he had refused to sell because his father had given it to him decades earlier.
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