“It wasn’t.”
“No.”
He looked toward Mom’s empty chair.
“And I wasn’t here enough for her either.”
I could have told him everything was forgiven.
But it wasn’t.
Not yet.
“I don’t hate you,” I said. “But you hurt me.”
“I know.”
“And you can’t keep asking everyone else to stay quiet just because conflict scares you.”
He nodded.
“I know that too.”
This time, I believed him.
The funeral didn’t destroy Ethan and Camille’s marriage.
It only exposed problems that had already been there for years.
Over the next few months, they kept trying to work through them, but eventually they decided to live apart.
Whatever happens between them is theirs to figure out.
Ethan and I had things to repair too.
But he began showing up again.
Sometimes he came over for dinner. Sometimes he helped me sort through Mom’s belongings. Sometimes he simply sat at the kitchen table because he missed her and didn’t know where else to go.
One evening, after he left, I opened the drawer where I had kept Mom’s ring wrapped inside her pale blue scarf.
For the first time since she died, I slipped it onto my finger.
It was slightly loose.
And suddenly I was 7 again, sitting beside Mom and turning that same ring around her finger while she told me stories about Grandma.
That was when I finally understood exactly why she had chosen me to carry it.
Not because I had earned something.
Not because Ethan had failed.
And certainly not because it was worth $50,000.
She knew that when I looked at that ring, I wouldn’t see a diamond.
I would see her.
The stone was valuable.
But what Mom left behind was worth far more: the truth about what love looks like when no one is keeping score.
