“I do. Jesus. The doors don’t close in my mind, either.”
He stood up from the steps and walked into the yard. Hands in his pockets. He faced her. Looked at the blue tarp. Looked at the old Ford.
“What happened to your windows?” she asked.
“Just replacing them. You know how windows get on older houses.”
He then wanted them to be quiet. No more words. All he wanted was to walk over and sit down next to her and hold her hand. He thought that if he could do that then there would be something to hope for. That he could think he was really home.
So he walked over and sat down next to her and he held her hand. And she let him for a long, silent moment that reached back into the years. But then she took her hand from his and rubbed her palm down his back and she stood up and took a piece of paper from her pants pocket. She handed it to him and he looked at it. The note that he had dropped in the mail slot of her front door.
“Russell,” she said. “You can’t do this anymore.”
He wadded the note and held it in the palm of his hand.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m not kidding.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a lot between us now. A whole lot.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” he said.
She folded her arms. Looked toward the sky. “That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, either,” she said. “Just means there’s nothing to do.”
“It means that and a helluva lot more.”
“It’s probably not even the same kind of love.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“I can’t come back over here. You gotta promise you won’t come around the house.”
“I promise.”
“You probably wouldn’t even like me anyhow the way I am now.”
“I could say the same thing. But I bet I would.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I bet I would, too.”
She then reached into her other pocket and she took out a ring. The ring he had given her. The ring she had said yes to. She placed it in the middle of her open hand and held her hand out to him.
He looked at it. “I don’t want that.”
She moved back to the steps and set it down beside him.
“I got to go,” she said.
“Sarah, take that back. It’s yours.”
“It was. Once upon a time.”
He nodded. And she nodded. And she stood there waiting for him to get up. Waiting for him to say something else. But he didn’t move and he didn’t speak. So she walked to her car and got in. She looked at him as she drove away but she didn’t wave. And neither did he.
26
SHE WASN’T TO THE END OF THE BLOCK BEFORE SHE WANTED IT back. God, she wanted it back. Couldn’t understand now why she had given it to him so forcibly. Without compassion. Couldn’t understand now why she had felt like she had to bring it with her at all. She stopped at the stop sign and looked over her shoulder. He was still sitting on the steps. Looking not at her but ahead. She realized now that it was much more than a ring. Much more than something she had kept buried in her underwear drawer for eleven years. Much more than something she had been careful to conceal when she moved in with a husband and careful to conceal when they moved from the smaller house to the larger house. More than white gold and a small diamond. She realized now as she sat at the stop sign and looked over her shoulder at him that the ring was much more. Something magical. Never too far away. That led through a doorway and to another life in another world with another man and as long as she had the ring there would be that possibility in her mind. That place to drift toward. Not a world that she could cross into and not a world she was certain she would cross into if given the choice but a world that was available to her to think about sometimes when she was alone.