Eric never took off his wedding ring. Not once, in twenty-two years of marriage.
Not while he was under the truck with grease running down to his elbows. Not while he was out back splitting firewood in the fall. Not even when the grit worked its way under the band and settled into that soft crease of skin, and I threatened, more than once, to scrub his whole hand raw with an old toothbrush.
One afternoon I came into the garage and caught him cleaning a carburetor with the ring still on, gold band gleaming through a film of black, oil worked into every line of his knuckles, and I just stood there in the doorway and shook my head.
“You know normal people take those off before they go destroying them,” I said.
Eric glanced down at his hand like he’d forgotten it was attached to him. “Then I’d have to remember where I put it. And then I’d spend the whole afternoon looking for it instead of finishing the truck.”
“You can’t remember one safe place? One drawer? One little dish by the sink?”
He smiled at me, that easy, unbothered smile I had been looking at since we were twenty-four years old, and wiped his hands on a rag that made them no cleaner.
“I’d rather keep my promises where I can see them.”
I laughed at him then and told him he was a sentimental old fool, and I went back inside to start dinner. After twenty-two years of marriage, you stop examining every little thing your husband says. Certain words simply become part of the furniture, worn smooth and familiar, and you stop noticing they’re there at all.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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