And we did. We took it to a jeweler a few months later, and they repaired it. But the finger had healed crooked. The knuckle was thick and knotted and stiff. The ring wouldn’t go over it without a fight, and when it did, it pinched.
He tried for a few weeks. Then one night he came to bed and put it in my hand.
“I’m sorry, Lee,” he said. That was his name for me. Lee. Nobody else ever called me that. “It hurts like hell. I just can’t.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just a ring. I know you’re married. You know you’re married. That’s what matters.”
So he put it in the little wooden box in the top drawer of his dresser. The box his grandfather had made, with the carved pine tree on the lid.
And it had stayed there for twelve years.
