While he was searching for a missing book, the velvet case had slipped beneath the passenger seat.
“What’s that?” I had asked.
His face had gone pale.
“Nothing.”
He had reached for it, but I had laughed and pulled it away.
“Nothing comes in a jewelry box.”
“Give it back, Hannah.”
There had been something in his voice that made me obey.
He had taken the case, tucked it into the glove compartment, and changed the subject.
I had never seen it again.
Now my fingers trembled as I lifted it from the box.
Douglas watched me.
“I bought it in town three days before I left,” he said. “I was going to give it to you.”
I opened the case.
Inside lay a delicate gold ring, simple and narrow, with a tiny sapphire set between two small diamonds.
The stone caught the light.
For an instant, I was nineteen again, sitting beside him in that old car, unaware that my entire understanding of the next forty years was about to become a story neither of us had been brave enough to tell.
