For most of my life, I’d carried my first and only love’s memory with me and believed there was nothing left to learn about the boy I’d loved. Then someone from his past finally found the courage to knock on my door.
The brown paper box sat open on my kitchen counter, and I couldn’t make my hands stop shaking long enough to close it.
The gold ring inside the small box caught the morning light as if it were mocking me. Beneath it, a yellowed jeweler’s receipt showed yesterday’s date in plain black ink.
My left thumb kept rubbing the crooked copper wire on my ring finger. Fifty-five years of habit. Fifty-five years of Thomas.
A yellowed jeweler’s receipt.
Then came three quiet knocks at the door.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Whoever was on the other side had probably left that box in my mailbox with no stamp, no return address, and one word written on the top. My name: “Margaret.”
Let me start from the beginning so you understand my distress.
Then came three quiet knocks at the door.
***
I was 18 when Thomas took me behind the high school football field on a warm September evening. He was leaving for war in four days, and he was so nervous his voice cracked when he asked me.
“I don’t have a real ring yet,” my high school sweetheart said, holding out a thin, twisted piece of copper wire bent into a crooked little circle. He looked almost ashamed as he slipped it onto my finger.
“I couldn’t afford one. But someday I’ll replace this with a real one. I promise.”
He was so nervous.
I remember laughing, not because it was funny, but because I loved him so much it hurt.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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