This was a mistake. Not the concept of buying a ring. The execution. I walked into three different jewelers and stared attrays of diamonds like a man trying to read a language he’d never studied. They were all shiny. They were all expensive. They all looked like rings. Beyond that, I had nothing.
The first jeweler showed me a princess-cut diamond the size of a small marble. I looked at it and thought about Miley’s hands, the way they moved when she cooked, quick and precise, always in motion. She’d hate something that big. It would get in the way.
The second jeweler showed me something with a halo setting and enough sparkle to be visible from space. I thought about the way Miley dressed, simple, elegant, nothing that screamed for attention. The ring screamed. I left.
I called Eleanor from the parking lot of the third jeweler.
“I need help.”
“With what, sweetheart?”
“Buying a ring. For Miley.”
The pause that followed was exactly two seconds long, and in those two seconds I could hear my grandmother’s entire emotional response, the joy, the relief, the I-told-you-so she was physically restraining herself from saying.
“What does she like?” Eleanor asked.
“She likes simple things. She likes things that mean something. She hates anything flashy.”
“Then get her something simple that means something and isn’t flashy.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s perfectly helpful. You’re overthinking it because you’re in love and love makes intelligent men temporarily stupid.” She paused. “Get her a solitaire. Round cut. Not too large. Yellow gold, not platinum. She has warm skin, and warm metals suit warm people.”
I wrote it down.
“And Christopher? She’s going to say yes.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that girl. And I know you. And I’ve been waiting for this phone call since the day she walked into my house and you looked at her like the world had just rearranged itself.” Her voice was warm and sure. “She’s going to say yes.”
I bought the ring. Round-cut solitaire. Yellow gold. Simple and beautiful and exactly like her.
I went to the office to clear my schedule for the next week. I was planning. For the first time in my life, I was planning something that wasn’t a strategy or a performance or a defensive maneuver. I was planning a future.
My receptionist met me at the door. “Mr. Vale, there’s someone waiting for you. A woman. She said you’d know who she was.”
I walked into my office.
Seraphina was sitting in the chair across from my desk. Legs crossed. Hair shorter than I remembered. London had sharpened her edges. She looked the same and entirely different, the way people do when you haven’t seen them in years and the version in your memory doesn’t match the one in front of you.
“Christopher.” She stood. “I heard about the marriage. I’m back briefly and I wanted to talk.”
I looked at her. The woman I’d bought a ring for once before. The woman who’d made me believe that maybe the unwanted boy could be wanted after all.
I expected something. Anger. Pain. The old familiar burn.
I feltnothing.
The bitterness was gone, the resentment, the ghost of love, the echo of betrayal—all of it absent now, replaced by a calm that surprised me when I thought about her.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk.”
We went to a hotel bar downtown. Neutral ground. She ordered wine. I ordered water. She raised an eyebrow.
“I’m driving,” I said.
