Chapter 24: The Ring

I did not open the box in the hall.

I carried it home through the garden, and I sat on the stone bench under my mother's window with it in my lap.

Mama had been wheeled out beside me with a blanket over her knees.

Nico lay on his stomach on the grass, drawing, with his tongue between his teeth.

"Open it," Mama said. "I am old, and I am not getting younger."

"You are fifty-eight."

"And I have a new liver, and I intend to see you do this."

I broke the seal with my thumbnail.

Inside, on a bed of black paper, lay the ring.

It was the heavy black and gold signet ring Alessio had given me at the winter ball, and the stone was just as dark as I remembered.

I had kept the courier receipt for six years.

I had told no one why.

Alessio came across the lawn in his shirtsleeves.

He had left the cane in the house and walked very straight, because he knew we were watching.

He stopped in front of me.

"Do you want me to?" he asked.

He held out his hand for the ring.

"No."

His face went still.

"I want to put it on myself," I said.

"Serena."

"Six years ago I took it off and mailed it away like a bill." I lifted it out of the box. "Nobody gave it back to me. I'm taking it back."

I slid the ring onto my left hand.

It still fit.

"Now you can ask," I said.

Alessio dropped to one knee on the wet grass.

He took my hand with the ring on it and kissed the knuckle above the band.

"Will you stay?" he said.

"I will stay."

"Will you be in my house, and my bed, and my registry, as long as we both live?"

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