Chapter 4: The Ring

On Friday afternoon, I let myself into my own house with a key I'd had for nine years.

Travis's car wasn't in the driveway.

He hadn't been home since Halloween. His mother had told my friend so over the phone, sweetly.

"He's staying near the dealership this week," Gail had said. "Busy season."

Eli carried the empty boxes in from his truck and set them in the hall.

My friend stood in the front door, ready to stop anyone who came up the walk.

"You have an hour," she said. "Take what's yours. Leave what's his."

I walked through the living room and the kitchen and the stairs that I'd climbed carrying laundry for nine years.

There was a baby monitor on the counter, still in its box.

I had bought it in September and never opened it.

I packed my mother's quilt, my own books, my winter clothes, and the crib sheets with the little owls on them.

I took the framed photo from my nightstand of my mother at twenty-eight, laughing at a county fair.

I did not take the wedding album.

In the cupboard over the stove was Gail's good Pyrex dish with the blue lid.

I'd carried it home from her house two Sundays ago full of leftover ham, and washed it, and never given it back.

So her voicemail had been about something real.

I stood holding the dish in the kitchen and almost laughed.

Then I walked into the dining room.

The table was bare, the way I'd left it Wednesday morning.

My friend came in behind me and set the lawyer's folder down in front of me.

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