Two Hearts That Could Never Meet novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Her Own Terms

I sold the ring on Monday.

Lawrence had picked it up off the white tablecloth the night of the gala, and he had carried it in his coat pocket ever since.

On Sunday he put it in my hand without a word.

"It's yours," he said. "Do what you want with it."

What I wanted was to hand it to a jeweler on Newbury Street who looked at it under a lamp for ten minutes and wrote me a check for sixty-one thousand dollars.

I carried the check across Boston in my glove.

Roxy was on a ladder in the shop, hanging dried eucalyptus from the ceiling, with a pencil behind her ear.

I laid the check on the counter.

"What's that?" she said.

"Half of the down payment."

She came down the ladder very slowly.

"Millicent, it's your ring."

"It's a rock a woman picked for me. I'd rather own a building."

"You'd rather own a shop with a leaking roof and a landlord's mold in the cold room."

"I'd rather own it with you."

Roxy looked at the check, and then at me, and her chin began to wobble.

"I'm not crying," she said. "It's the eucalyptus."

"It's dried."

"It's allergic eucalyptus."

I hugged her. She smelled of damp leaves and coffee, and she hugged me back hard enough to hurt.

"Fifty-fifty," I said.

"Fifty-fifty. And you do the books. I hate the books."

"I'm terrible at the books."

"Then we'll hate them together."

The bell over the door rang.

Lawrence came in out of the cold with a small paper bag in one hand. He had snow in his hair.

He saw the check on the counter, and then my face, and he understood.

"You sold it," he said.

"I did."

"Good."

"Good?"

"I never liked it much," he said. "It was my mother's idea of a ring."

Roxy took her coffee and went into the back room, loudly, and shut the door.

He stood in front of me between the buckets of white tulips.

"I have something," he said. "It isn't a speech."

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