Plain gold, two small dark green emerald stones set flat into the metal on either side of a two-carat diamond center.
The diamond catches the grey morning light when I turn it.
She gave it to me the week before she died, sitting up in her bed at the farmhouse outside Snyder with the oxygen line under her nose and the back of her hand against my cheek.
*You give this to a woman who deserves it, Silas. I'll know when it happens, even if I'm not here. Mothers know.*
I told her I didn't know any women like that.
She told me eventually I'd find one, and I told her she was being optimistic, and she laughed and called me a difficult child and closed her eyes.
She was right. I was wrong.
I close my hand around the ring.
The metal is warm now from my skin and I can feel my mother's hand on my cheek the way it was the day she put this ring in my palm.
*Mama, I found her.*
I put the ring in the front pocket of my jeans and button the pocket flap closed over it.
It sits against my thigh through the denim like a weight I'm finally allowed to carry.
I walk back to the kitchen and pour two cups.
I set hers at her place at the small table where we've been eating together every morning since they've been here.
I crack four eggs into a bowl and whisk them up.
The bacon goes into the pan. The biscuits from yesterday are wrapped in foil in the oven keeping warm.
I work at the stove with the ring in my pocket and the morning going faster than I'm ready for.
I'm a man who came out of his old life with a hole in his ribs, and a debt to an MC Prez.
Now, that same man is making breakfast for the woman he's going to marry.
The bacon goes onto the paper towel. I move the eggs into the pan.
Hadley appears in the doorway.
She's in one of my shirts, again, which I guess I should consider her nightly ritual.
She sees me at the stove and stops with her hand on the doorframe and looks at me adoringly.
I look back. My voice comes out lower than I mean it to. "Mornin', baby."
Her hand stays on the doorframe. Her mouth moves around the name like she's testing it again. "Mornin', Silas."
The name moves through my chest the way it has every time she's said it since she said it the first time.
I lift the spatula. "Sit down. Coffee's already poured."
She crosses the kitchen barefoot, goes up on her toes and presses her mouth against the side of my jaw, and stays there a moment with her hand flat against my chest where she can feel my heart going.
It has to be going faster than usual under her palm.
If she notices, she doesn't say anything about it.
