Chapter 14: The Other Half of the Note

"What did you do the night Lorna left?" I said.

We were in the church parking lot, with the bell ringing noon over our heads.

Sawyer leaned against the side of his truck with his arms folded tight.

"Not here," he said. "I'll show you. It's at the yard."

"Show me what?"

"Everything I've been too much of a coward to put on the table."

I followed his truck down to the water.

The yard was empty on a Sunday, with the cranes standing still and the lake slapping the slips.

He unlocked the office and turned on the heater.

He did not sit behind the desk.

He opened the gray safe in the corner and took an envelope out of a pile of old payroll folders.

"Open it," he said.

Inside was a pawn ticket, creased soft from handling, and a strip of ruled paper torn raggedly along one edge.

"The ticket first."

I read it.

It was dated February, four and a half years ago.

It listed a platinum ring with one diamond, and a payment of eleven thousand four hundred dollars.

"That's her ring," I said.

"It's the one she left on the kitchen table with the note."

He rubbed his jaw.

"The yard missed payroll that winter. My father's loans came due, and the men had kids."

"So you sold it."

"I made the wages, and I never told you."

"Why not?"

"Because you'd have asked whose it was."

I held the ticket and tried to find the place in me that wanted to be angry.

It was empty.

For five years I had believed he kept a place for Lorna.

He had sold the ring for payroll in the first winter of my marriage, and said nothing, because a ring was not worth a fight.

"That money went to the men," I said. "It never went to her."

"It was never for her after you moved your coat into my closet."

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