Chapter 9 - The Copies Beside His Hand
I got to the lobby seating area before he did. That morning I'd worked the lunch shift straight through without a real break, and my feet ached inside my shoes. The daylight was fading behind the tall windows, turning the water outside from bright blue to gray.
My name tag was in my apron pocket. I kept touching it through the fabric while I waited. In my tote bag, folded inside a manila envelope, were the copies I'd made at the library after my shift. The originals were safe at home in the shoebox under my bed. I wasn't bringing those to a hotel lobby.
Richard came from the elevators, still in his navy suit but without his jacket. His white shirt sleeves were buttoned at the wrist. He saw me and nodded once, the way business people do when they don't want to make a scene.
"Did you get off all right?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "My manager logged me out."
We sat in two low chairs with a small marble table between us. A floor lamp with a cream shade threw yellow light over the table. It was quieter here than the dining room, but not private. A couple with suitcases waited near the front desk. I could hear ice clinking from the bar.
I set the envelope on the table. My hands were shaking a little, so I pressed them flat against my skirt before I opened it.
"I brought three," I said. "They're copies. I didn't want to carry the real ones."
He leaned forward. "That's fine."
I laid them out side by side, careful not to overlap the faces. The first was my dad holding me as a baby on a porch. The second was him standing by an old truck, squinting into the sun. The third was the clearest — him at a backyard cookout, his hand resting on a cooler, the ring facing the camera.
Richard didn't touch them at first. He just looked.
"May I?" he said.
I nodded.
He picked up the third copy with his fingertips and held it under the lamp. His left hand rested on the edge of the table, and I could see the ring — large gold, blue stone catching the light. Without thinking, I slid the copy closer to his hand so they were next to each other.
Up close, the match was hard to argue with. Same wide gold band. Same deep blue oval stone. Same high setting that lifted the stone off the finger. In the copy, the light hit the stone and made a white dot on the left edge. On his hand, under the lobby lamp, that same white reflection appeared when he turned his wrist.
My breath caught. I hadn't expected it to look that close.
"That's it," I whispered. "That's his ring."
Richard didn't say anything. He set the photo down and slowly turned his hand so the top of the ring faced me.
I stared at the stone. Then I looked back at the copy. Then at his hand again.
Something pulled at me. I bent closer, even though I knew one of the front desk clerks was glancing over.
In the cookout photo, enlarged by the library copier, there was a tiny pale fleck inside the blue, near the lower left side. Like a grain of salt trapped in glass. I'd seen it before in the original with a magnifying glass I'd borrowed from work. I always thought it was part of the stone.
On his hand, the stone looked clear. Deep blue all the way through. No fleck.
I didn't want to say it. Part of me wanted to ignore it and just let the match be enough.
"There is something," I said quietly.
He looked up at me. "Tell me."
"In my photo," I said, "there's a little white spot in the blue. Down here." I pointed with the tip of my finger, not touching the paper. "Yours doesn't have it."
I expected him to get defensive. To say the copy was blurry, or the light was different. My old manager would have.
Richard leaned in and studied the copy again. He held his own hand up next to it and compared them for a long time.
"You're right," he said. "I see what you mean."
He sat back. The bar noise filled the space for a second.
"I don't want to guess," he said. "If that fleck was in Thomas's stone, I need to account for where it went. The ring came to me after he died, and there is a chain I can walk you through. Jeweler receipts. Who sized it. Who cleaned it."
My throat felt tight. "You had it worked on?"
"I had it cleaned and checked in Chicago about twelve years ago," he said. "They may have reset the stone. Or replaced it. I kept the paperwork because it was his. I can show you."
I folded my hands together to keep them still. The copies looked up at me from the table — my dad younger than I was now, smiling, his hand with that ring on the cooler.
"I wanted it to just match," I said.
"I know," he said. "It still matches in every other way. Band, cut, setting. But you were right to catch that. If we're going to do this, we do it straight."
He didn't reach for my hand. He didn't call me family. He just slid the copies back toward me, careful, like they mattered.
May you like
"Bring the same three copies tomorrow," he said. "I'll bring what I have on the ring. And we'll put them side by side again."
I slipped the pages back into the envelope. Outside the windows, the water had gone dark. The lamp left a warm circle on the table where the ring had been.
