I finish the plan an hour later, my fingers trembling as I hover over the Send button on the email to Luciano. My heart pounds as I click it, watching the email disappear into cyberspace. It’s done. Now all I can do is wait. The knock at the door jolts me, breaking my moment of reflection. “Isa, are you awake?”
I slither out of bed and saunter toward the door as if any energy I had was already depleted for the day.
Standing at the doorway is Sofia, with mascara streaks down her face. Her appearance almost startles me, but I try not to make it obvious. She immediately runs into my arms and begins to sob uncontrollably. Does she know about my fight with Valentina? Is it that big of a deal?
“Hey. Is everything okay?” I hold her tightly, not realizing how badly I need this hug.
“It’s all a mess,” she mumbles into my shoulder. “This is all a mess, Isa. I don’t know what to do.”
I shush her softly as I rub her back slowly.
“Okay, back up. Sit down, and let’s talk.”
Sofia runs inside and throws herself on the bed exactly like a princess in a cartoon would have done it.
“Sof, it’s only nine a.m. How did you manage to have a crisis already before I got an iced coffee?”
I sit down at the edge of the bed and wait for her to finish sobbing into my pillow.
“It’s Luciano,” she says into the pillow.
“What about him? Did he break up with you? Is he gay? Did he run away with Daniel?”
“No!”
“Okay, okay. So what happened, then?”
She sits up abruptly, her makeup even more smeared than before.
“Jesus, Sof,” I say as I try to fix her smudged lipstick.
“He lost the wedding rings,” she cries as she throws herself back onto the pillow.
The wedding rings? The ones that Valentina stole? Did she not give them back?
“Like your wedding bands?”
“Yes, Isa. What else? The rings we’re supposed to wear, signifying we’re married! The rings we got at Tiffany together. The rings we engraved our names into. We’re getting married tomorrow!”
“Okay, sorry! Are you sure? Did he say he lost them?”
“Yes! I went to look at them in the ring box, and they were gone. So I asked him about them and he’s playing dumb. Like he has no idea where they could even be. We got into a huge fight about it.”
She sits up, wiping her face from falling tears, making her makeup look even worse.
“A fight? Why? It’s not like he lost them on purpose, right?”
I’m starting to believe Valentina did lose the rings in the lake. How stupid was I to believe she found them? It was a fucking lake in the middle of the night. Unless she has some secret superpower where she can see underwater in the dark, there’s no way she could have found those rings. I don’t doubt that Sofia and Luciano’s $30,000 wedding bands are at the bottom of the lake at Camp Hollow Pines.
“We fought because I told him that it was obvious he didn’t think they were important if he could lose them so easily. They’re expensive rings, Isa. You know how Tiffany rings are.”
“Right, right,” I mumble.
“If he can’t take care of this one task, how can I expect him to take care of other things in the future? This was his one responsibility. I’ve done everything!”
“I thought you had a wedding planner and assistant?”
“Okay, they did everything, but I’ve been making all the decisions! I just feel like he doesn’t care. What are we going to do now? We can’t get married without wedding rings! And I won’t pick up random rings from some random jeweler in town. Could you imagine?”
