Chapter 8: Lydia's Ring

I didn't cry over my sister's post.

I looked at it for exactly as long as it took to understand it.

Damian had asked Lydia to marry him four days after I walked out of my own wedding.

His family and mine had been planning this long before the dress got ruined.

I put the phone down and woke Malcolm with a kiss on his shoulder.

"Lydia and Damian are engaged," I said.

He opened one eye.

"Fast," he said.

"They've been waiting for me to get out of the way."

"Then let them have what they're getting."

I grinned, and he looked at me.

By noon we were walking down to the tasting room together, because I wanted to see what my father had done with the staff.

The tour group was already there.

Fifteen visitors in sun hats stood on the gravel terrace under the big oak, holding little glasses.

A guide was telling them that the Whitman family had made wine on this hill for three generations.

Then a white convertible swung into the lot, and my sister got out of it.

She wore a pale linen dress and sunglasses, and she walked straight across the gravel toward me, smiling.

Her left hand was held out in front of her.

It wore two rings.

One of them was Damian's new diamond.

The other one, on her middle finger, was a thin gold band with a small green stone.

I stopped walking.

It was my mother's ring.

She had worn it every day of my childhood.

She had been buried without it, because my father said the stone had gone missing.

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