I took the ring. My hands were shaking too now. I opened the little hinge, the way I’d seen him do in that video by the lake. I slid it carefully over his bad knuckle. The thick, crooked knuckle that had broken twelve years ago and never healed right.
I closed the hinge.
It clicked into place right where the pale band had been.
“Does it hurt?” I whispered.
He looked down at his hand for a long time.
“No,” he said. “For the first time in twelve years, it doesn’t hurt at all.”
I didn’t have anything written. I hadn’t known I’d need to.
But Pastor Jim looked at me, and everyone looked at me, and Mark looked at me with his whole heart on his face. So I said the only true thing I had.
“When you forget,” I said, “I’ll remember for both of us.”
