Elaine looked up at him. Why, she said, her voice very quiet and very steady, did you tell us Sarah was the one who never wanted to get married?
He stared at her. Then at me. Then down at the papers on the table, and I watched him understand, all at once, the shape and size of the trap he was standing in.
What is this, he said.
Elaine held up the receipt. It’s proof, she said, that I gave you your grandmother’s ring three years ago so that you could propose to Sarah in Maine.
His face changed, the sleep burning off it, something defensive and hard rising up in its place. This is private, he said.
No, Elaine said. It stopped being private the moment you used her as your excuse.
He turned to me then, and there was accusation in it, as if I were the one who had done something. You called my mother, he said, in the middle of the night?
Where is the ring, David, I said. I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. Something in how flat and calm it came out seemed to unnerve him more than shouting would have.
He gave a strained little laugh, the ghost of the cold laugh from the restaurant, but with none of its power now. This is ridiculous, he said.
Bring it here, Elaine said.
He looked at her, his jaw working. I was going to give it back, he said.
You had three years, Elaine said, and she did not blink.
He stood there another moment, and then, because there was nothing else left for him to do, he turned and went back up the stairs. We listened to him moving around above us, a drawer opening, a pause, his feet again. When he came back down, he was holding the ring, and I felt Elaine go very still beside me, because it was not in the velvet heirloom box she remembered. It was in a cheap black jewelry box, the flimsy kind you get for nothing, the kind that comes with a costume-jewelry purchase at a mall kiosk. He set it on the table, and Elaine reached over and opened it, and there, sitting untouched in the cheap plastic, was his grandmother’s diamond, cleaned and gleaming exactly as it had been in the photo she had texted her sister three years earlier.
