The Wedding Ring That Never Made It to My Finger Chapter 08

The Wedding Ring That Never Made It to My Finger Chapter 08

Ethan searched every funeral home and cemetery in the city, one by one, asking at each front desk until someone recognized the name.

He found her in a garden cemetery at the edge of town, the kind of place where everything blooms.

The headstone was new, the granite still sharp–edged. In the photograph, my mother was smiling.

She looked exactly the way she always did when she saw him. She’d take his hand, every time, eyes bright, and say the same thing.

“Take care of my girl, Ethan. Promise me you’ll take care of her.”

He dropped to his knees in front of the headstone. The impact shot pain up his legs.

He didn’t feel it. “Ms. Reed…”

His voice came out wrecked

–

scraped raw, barely recognizable as his own.

He had nothing else to say.

What could he say? That while my back was being stitched up – seventeen stitches – he was pressing ice to Nina’s forehead?

That while I knelt alone outside the operating room, praying for my mother’s life, he was whispering Nina to sleep?

He couldn’t say any of it.

He stayed on his knees until the sky went dark.

A groundskeeper came by and told him they were closing. “Come back in the morning.”

He didn’t move. The man sighed and walked away.

The wind picked up after dark. The cold cut through him. He was still kneeling.

The memories came, one after another, unbidden.

The first time he came to our house, my mom had cooked enough for ten people and wouldn’t let him stop eating.

She kept insisting he was too skinny, loading his plate until it overflowed.

Back then, he’d been too shy to say much. Just sat there grinning like an idiot.

On the day of our engagement, my mom had held his hand and cried.

daughter.

He’d taken both her hands and sworn it

Not while he was alive.

–

My mother had believed every word.

What about now?

of ner

that he would protect me, take care of me, that I would never have to suffer.

He’d destroyed everything. My mother died because of what he set in motion, and she never even got to say goodbye to

me.
By dawn, he couldn’t feel his legs.

He gripped the headstone and tried to pull himself up. His legs buckled, and he went back down.

Again and again. It took him half an hour to stand on his own two feet.

He looked down at my mother’s face one last time.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Reed.*

Then he turned and made his way down the hill.

He didn’t go home.

—

Instead he went to the apartment we’d rented when we first started out our first place after college. The one with the

leaking ceiling.

Freezing in winter, suffocating in summer. We used to cram onto that tiny mattress and split a single bowl of noodles

because we couldn’t afford two.

New tenants lived there now. Different curtains in the windows. A different life inside.

He stood outside for a long time, just looking. Then he walked away.

Next, the café. The one I used to love a latte and a corner seat, and I could lose an entire afternoon there.

–

New baristas. New furniture.

Everything different. Everything moved on. Just like us.

He sat in my usual spot and stared at nothing for a while. Then he stood up and left.

Then Lover’s Peak.

He’d carried me up the last steep stretch on his back once.

Thousands of steps in total. His legs had been shaking by the top, but he’d refused to put me down.

At the summit, there was an old tree with ribbons tied to every branch

hundreds of them, frayed by weather and time.

—

wishes and promises knotted there by couples.

He found ours.

The red had faded – bleached by sun and rain to almost pink.

But the handwriting was still there. Ethan and Clara, together forever.

He stared at those words until they blurred.

Then he untied the ribbon, folded it carefully, and slipped it into his pocket.