Kerry Says

There was nothing for it. She was going to have to tell him.

She’d spent all day searching, starting in the obvious places and finally resorting to unhooking the drain pipe and staring through the slats in the deck. But the ring was gone. Her engagement ring was gone. And not even St. Anthony seemed capable of bringing it back.

She didn’t know when the little band of gold and rock and promise had slipped off her finger. It was her housekeeper, Anita, who had alerted her to the fact that it was gone, asking her if she took it off when she typed.

It was as she said, “No, I always have it on.” that she realized her finger was bare. This struck her as more curious than tragic, until she looked up to see the horror in the elder woman’s face. A horror she belatedly tried to mimic, unconvincingly.

The ring, she had barely taken it off since the night he gave it to her. In the very beginning she didn’t wear it at night (it tended to get caught on the expensive sheets) but he looked so wounded whenever he saw her slip it off she’d stopped and it had become a permanent fixture until….

When had it fallen? Had she been wearing it that morning? The evening before? The day before that? She truly had no idea.

Trying to focus in on the last time she’d seen it, she found that, for all the months it had been a part of her, she couldn’t really picture it on her finger. Couldn’t quite remember what it would have looked like sitting there winking back at her.

Processing this, she could see Anita from the corner of her eye hovering by the office door and watching for a more suitable reaction. So she dropped to her knees behind her desk in a move she hoped both hid her from view and showed a genuine feminine upset at this turn of events.

While she was patting the pristine carpet, she thought of asking the housekeeper the last time she’d seen the ring. But she was unwilling to further scandalize the proper British woman was already staring down at her with all the judgment of Zeus.

She toyed with the idea of bursting into tears as a way of making amends but instead stayed tuck under her desk murmuring concerns scratching the pile until the door clicked shut.

She was upset about losing it, of course. It was a lovely ring and a large one.

But what truly shook her was how she hadn’t noticed it was gone. And how, her memory of it now, for all its size and weight, felt tenuous and hazy.

And she could not have been long without it she reasoned rolling onto her back. He’d been away two weeks; she must have had it on when he left. He would have noticed its absence. He had a tendency to stare at it, mesmerized, twisting it to see the sparkle.

“This is how much I love you” he’d tell her holding the hand up to better catch the light.

It wasn’t as crass as it sounded. Not really. It was just that he had no belief in the value of the infinite. He kept his emotions like he kept his investments, tied to solid assets.

And now he was hours away from coming home and she’d gone and lost his love somewhere, shed it like snakeskin and not even noticed. How could she tell him that? How could she ever explain it?

She began to panic. She had to find the ring. She jumped to her feet and scanned and floor. Then she turned to the desk, strewing papers and yanking on drawer handles with fervor enough to satisfy even Anita. She did not find it.

She ran to the bedroom checking first in the sheets, then fanning out across the room kicking shoes and digging through boxes she knew she had not touched in years. She did not find it. From room to room she went, shoving and lifting and praying and calling out for his love like a lost pup. She did not find it.

Hours later she sat, defeated, in a shirt smeared with drain sludge and a handful of deck slivers but without a ring. And she knew everything was over.

She didn’t love him. She never had. But the day he’d opened up the teal blue box to show her the sum total of his affection, she thought that maybe he loved enough for two.

But she’d lost his love and had nothing to replace it. And it was over.

And he was coming up the driveway. And she was going to have to tell him.