Borrow My Seat novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Grandmother's Box

The pawn shop on Brady Street had a bell on the door and a dusty window full of guitars.

I walked in at 3:40 with the pink ticket in my fist.

Tobias came in behind me and stopped at my shoulder, not in front of me.

I noticed that, and I noticed that he did it on purpose.

The pawnbroker was a thin man with half-glasses, working a loupe over a watch.

"Help you?"

I put the ticket on the glass.

He looked at it for a long time, and then at me.

"That's Raskin's," he said.

"The ring is mine."

"Ma'am, the name on the ticket is Raskin."

"It was my grandmother's. I can show you her photograph wearing it. I can show you the will."

He raised his eyebrows over the glasses.

The bell rang behind us, and Greta came through the door in her scrubs, out of breath, with her car keys in her teeth.

"Did I miss it?" she said around them. "I got off at three. I drove like a criminal."

"You didn't miss it."

"Good."

She stood on my other side, and the pawnbroker looked from her to me to Tobias.

He took the ticket and went through a door into the back.

Nobody spoke while he was gone.

I heard the clock over the register.

I heard my own heart.

Tobias did not touch me.

He stood beside me with his hands in his coat pockets and his shoulder an inch from mine.

The not-touching was the steadiest thing in the room.

The man came back with a small paper envelope.

He set it on the glass, shook out a velvet box the color of old wine, and opened it.

The ring lay in the slot, small and gold, with seed pearls gone slightly yellow.

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