Pride, perhaps.
Or relief.
For the first time since entering the room, I felt less like the nineteen-year-old girl who had lost something.
I felt sixty.
Not old.
Not defeated.
Sixty years built from choices, mistakes, friendships, jobs, grief, laughter, loneliness, courage.
I had survived not knowing.
I could choose how I learned the rest.
Lucas stepped into the hallway to call his wife.
I stayed.
Douglas drifted in and out of sleep.
At one point, sometime after midnight, he opened his eyes and found me still there.
“Ruthie?”
“I’m here.”
“You should go home.”
“I just found you.”
His mouth curved.
“Fair point.”
Then he looked at the ring.
“You don’t have to wear it.”
I picked it up.
The little gold band was simple.
No diamond.
No engraving.
Exactly the sort of ring a nineteen-year-old boy with a part-time job at a hardware store could afford.
