“I know. Please, Sylvie. Just come.”
Forty minutes later, I stood outside his hospital room.
I had spent the entire drive trying to prepare myself for what I might see.
Nothing could have prepared me for Russell.
He was thinner than the boy I remembered. His hair, once dark and thick, had turned white, and illness had softened the strength I remembered in his face.
But when he looked at me, I saw him immediately.
There he was.
My Russell.
His eyes filled.
“Hey, Sylvie.”
I tried to smile.
“Hey, stranger.”
He laughed softly, and that familiar sound almost broke me.
Then I noticed the chair beside his bed.
A small wooden box was sitting on it.
My heart stopped.
I knew that box.
It had belonged to my father, Walter.
He had kept important papers and family letters inside it for as long as I could remember. After he died, I searched the house for it and never found it.
Now it was sitting in Russell’s hospital room.
I turned toward him.
“Why do you have my father’s box?”
Russell looked at it.
“Open it.”
My hands trembled as I lifted the lid.
Inside were old letters, some tied together with faded string.
Beneath them sat a small velvet ring box.
I stared at it.
Then at Russell.
“Is that…?”
He nodded.
I opened it.
Inside was a simple diamond ring.
It wasn’t large or expensive. It looked exactly like something a 19-year-old boy would have saved every spare dollar to buy.
My eyes burned.
“You really bought this for me?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
Russell pointed toward an envelope beneath the ring.
His name was written across the front.
I recognized my father’s handwriting immediately.
I unfolded the letter.
Russell,
Sylvia has been accepted into the teaching program here. She has worked hard for this, and she has a real future in front of her.
If you ask her to follow you, I believe she will.
That is exactly why I’m asking you not to.
She is loyal to you, perhaps more than she understands. If she gives up everything now and one day regrets it, both of you will carry that regret.
