Part 3

I would have settled for him taking the box. At the door, I balanced it on one arm and worked the key into the lock. The familiar little resistance caught, then gave. I stepped inside. The living room was quiet, but I heard movement beyond the entryway. Someone was there with him. I thought of a delivery, perhaps flowers, or a colleague dropping something off. Paul worked in regional sales, and work had a way of entering every room before he did. His voice was low. I moved far enough past the doorway to see them. Jessica stood in the middle of our living room. She worked in his office. She was thirty-two, polished and composed, and her beige trench coat lay over the armchair. I had met her before. Seeing her in our house wasn’t, by itself, something I could object to.

"That was what my mind tried first: the reasonable explanation."

A report. An office problem. Something urgent enough to bring a colleague to Evanston. I was still holding the food. Neither of them had heard me come in, or neither had turned. Paul stood close to her, his head slightly bent, concentrating on her hand. For one strange second, I thought she must have hurt a finger. Then the stone caught the light. He was sliding my mother’s sapphire ring onto Jessica’s left index finger. I knew it before I could make myself accept it. The angle of the stone, the setting, the shape I’d watched move through every kitchen of my childhood. I didn’t need to step closer. My mother had been dead only days. Paul finished the movement while I stood there. I looked at his hands first.

"They were hands I knew: reaching for a coffee mug, fastening a watch, resting briefly against my shoulder when he passed behind my chair."

Now one held Jessica’s fingers while the other settled my mother’s ring into place. It wasn’t an accidental glimpse of something ambiguous. I had seen what he was doing. Paul looked up and released her hand. For a moment, I expected the ordinary response of someone caught crossing a line. A startled explanation. A question about how long I’d been standing there. Instead, he adjusted his watch. “Vivien, do not make this a thing.”

I looked at him. He’d spoken before I’d said anything. I was aware of the box pressing against my coat and the faint smell of turkey trapped beneath its lid. A corner had softened where condensation had gathered. I tightened my grip because I didn’t know what else to do with my hands. Jessica looked down at the ring. Paul sighed. She was helping sort the old things in the guest room, he explained. Donations. Things that needed clearing away. I thought of my mother’s belongings waiting upstairs. Not clutter I’d forgotten. Not a project anyone had asked him to manage. The things I hadn’t yet been able to sort. I’d come home expecting the particular loneliness of losing a parent. I hadn’t prepared for someone else deciding the remains of that life were in the way. “What are you doing?”

I asked. The question came out quietly. Paul glanced at Jessica, then back at me. “Jessica is just helping.”

There were people who’d helped me that week by making food, washing cups, carrying flowers. None of them had needed to wear something of my mother’s while doing it. Jessica shifted her weight. I waited for her to pull off the ring. She didn’t. I looked at the hand she’d left hanging beside her dress. The sapphire seemed impossibly familiar in such an unfamiliar place. I could remember Mom pressing that same hand over mine during visits, the ring cool where it touched my skin. Sometimes I’d rubbed the edge of the setting without noticing.