Chapter 16: The Ring

I walked down the drive in the rain with my hand shut tight.

The gate was iron and ten feet high, and I did not open it.

I stood on my side of the bars and Dalton knelt on his, and the water ran off both of us.

Behind me, I heard Zane come down the gravel and stop at a distance.

He did not speak.

"Hal," Dalton said, and looked up. "You came."

"I've got something of yours."

I opened my hand.

The ring lay in my palm, a plain gold band, dull from three years in a coat pocket.

Dalton stared at it.

"You kept it," he said.

"I kept it in a laundromat. I kept it in a motel. I kept it on a chain around my neck for a year, because I thought I owed it to the dead."

His face crumpled.

"I thought that meant..." he began.

"It meant I was a fool."

I put my arm through the bars, and I threw the ring at his feet.

It hit the wet gravel with a tiny sound and rolled against his knee.

"Hallie."

"I'm not your wife, Dalton. I stopped being your wife the night you buried me."

"I didn't know."

"You didn't ask."

He picked up the ring in his shaking fingers and held it against his chest.

"What do I do?" he said.

"You go to the district attorney's office and tell them everything. About the funeral, the bodies, the Pittsburgh names and who paid whom."

"They'll put me in prison."

"They might."

"Hal."

"It's the first decent thing you've ever done on your own," I said. "Do it."

He stayed there for a long time on his knees.

Then he got up, very slowly, and walked away down the dark road with the ring in his fist.

I did not watch him go.

I turned around, and Zane was standing five feet away in the rain.

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