We’ll leave the town worse off now than it was before we agreed to our plan.
I still can’t speak, but suddenly I’m being crushed against his chest, both of his arms around me. “It’s okay. We’ll find it. And if we don’t, it’s just a ring.”
It’s just a ring.
But it’s not.
Not to me.
It’s every kind thing he’s done for me this past week. It’s how he’s gone so far above what I expected. It’s his patience and understanding and quiet acceptance of me no matter what I do, big or small, from blurting out that I was engaged to him to now, losing the engagement ring.
And I’m supposed to let him go.
“I didn’t take it off,” I whisper.
“So it’s probably here in the kitchen somewhere.”
If the situation were reversed, if he’d lost the engagement ring I’d given him, my family would take the first opportunity to say he’d never deserved it.
“I stopped a few places on my way here. I don’t—I don’t remember when I last knew I had it on my hand.”
“I don’t remember either,” Mom says quietly next to us. “I don’t remember looking at your ring today. Vicki, did you look at Amanda’s hand? Was she wearing her ring when she got here?”
“I ... did not,” my grandmother replies.
She’s not gloating.
She doesn’t sound happy.
But why would she be happy after what I just told her?
“Why don’t we start looking here—” Lorelei starts, but that’s apparently too much for my grandmother, who snorts loudly.
“You can go look in Amanda’s car,” she says. “I won’t have strangers snooping around my bakery.”
“Vicki,” Mom says again.
“I’d say that about anyone who doesn’t work here coming into my kitchen,” Grandma says. “And it’s still my kitchen until I actually retire. With afamily membertaking over.”
Mom sighs.
Dane sighs too. He still hasn’t let me go, and he’s stroking my back like a comforting pat can somehow make this all better.
I appreciate that he’s patient.
But I lost my engagement ring. Myfakeengagement ring.
The one that he deserves to have back.
Every time I think I’m doing something good, I mess it up.
“Can you check my car?” I say to Lorelei. “And I saw Pia. And Mrs. Briggs. It could—it could’ve fallen off anywhere between their shops.”
I can do this much.
I can ask my hometown best friend and my fake fiancé to check the other places I’ve been today while Mom and Grandma and I search the kitchen.
“I’m on it,” Lorelei says. “And I’ll text and give them a heads-up to look for it too.”
