Chapter 14 - Morning Light on the Ring I Left Behind
The taxi let me out under the awning just as the sky went pale. My gown was wrinkled down the front from the plastic chair in the waiting room, and the hem was damp where I'd stepped in a puddle in the hospital parking lot. I paid with the card from my clutch and the driver didn't ask about the dress. The doorman held the glass for me and looked past me, the way people do when they don't want to stare.
That morning I rode the elevator alone. I watched my face in the mirrored panel. My veil was gone — I'd folded it into a square in the taxi and set it on my lap. My hair had come loose around my ears. I kept smoothing it back with my fingers. I didn't cry on the way up. I just breathed and listened to the numbers.
The suite door was still on the latch the way I'd left it at three in the morning. Housekeeping hadn't been in. The air inside was stale and cold, and the blue night from the windows was gone. Daylight pushed flat and gray through the glass, over the city that didn't look blurred anymore. Just buildings and traffic and a water tower.
I stopped just inside the doorway because the suitcase was still there. Black, upright, beside the frame exactly where I'd stood when I said it. I hadn't imagined that part. My hand went to the handle without thinking and then pulled back.
The dark wood dresser was across the room. From the door I could see the small bright point on it. I walked over slowly, my shoes quiet on the carpet. The ring was still there where I'd put it. Large diamond halo, face up on the wood. A thin line of dust around it from the vent. I stood over it and didn't touch it. I could hear the clock on the nightstand ticking.
I sat on the edge of the bed and waited to feel something like relief and didn't. My phone had two percent left. The lamp was still on from last night, warm against the morning. I turned it off.
Daniel knocked once and then used his key. He looked like he hadn't slept, which he hadn't. His suit jacket was over his arm, his white shirt wrinkled and open at the collar, his shoes dusty. He closed the door behind him and saw me, saw the suitcase, saw the dresser. He stopped.
"You came back," he said.
"I told the nurse I'd be back by eight," I said.
He set his jacket on the chair and came no closer than the foot of the bed. He looked at the ring and then at me. His eyes moved the way tired people's do, slow to focus.
"It's still there," he said.
"Yes."
He nodded. He pulled his phone from his pants pocket and held it out, screen down. Then he walked to the dresser, picked up the ring carefully between his thumb and finger, and held it in his open palm toward me. He didn't try to put it on me.
"I want you to take this back when you're ready," he said. "Not tonight. When you decide. And I want you to have this." He set the phone on the dresser beside where the ring had been. "Full access. Code's off. Messages, call log, everything from last night with Emily's brother. You can read it all while I'm in the shower."
I looked at his palm and then at the phone. The ring caught the daylight and threw a small square of light on the wall.
"You're giving me your phone," I said.
"Yes."
"And the ring."
May you like
"I'm offering them," he said. "I'm not asking you to decide right now."
Outside a bus brakes squeaked on the street below. Daniel stood there with his hand still out, exhausted, waiting to see what I would do with what he'd put in front of me.
