Thwack.

Tiffany watched the small, white ball arch into the air and speed away, getting smaller and smaller. She scowled. She despised the plain, white golf balls that her daddy used. For every occasion, she brought him new golf balls with bright, bold colors and unusual designs, but he always chose the white ones to golf with.

“How could I risk losing something my sweet little girl gave to me,” he’d say as an explanation.

Tiffany wandered off the shortly-kept grass of the fairway and into the rough.

“I’m heading to the green,” she heard her daddy say. “Don’t wander too far.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Tiffany said.

She wished there were some clovers around. She wanted to add some more four-leafed clovers to her book of pressed plants.

She bent over and ran her hands through the blades of grass. She sighed.

Then, she saw a glimmer through the blades. She smiled. Could it be something shiny, something beautiful, something just for her?

She reached down and pulled out a shining gem. She could see all of the colors of the rainbow on its surface. She held her breath.

“So beautiful,” she breathed out. “A real diamond in the rough.”

She imagined putting it up on the knick-knack shelf in her room with all of her other little treasures.

She imagined bringing it to her daddy to show him.

But then, she had another thought. “Someone must have lost this here. And someone might be looking for this. And daddy will tell me that I need to give it back.”

She scrunched her nose and twisted her lips twisted like she’d just tasted some sour milk. She clenched her fist around the diamond.

“Daddy doesn’t need to know.”

She placed the diamond in her pocket.