Then I looked more closely at the ring.
It wasn’t a generic wedding band. It was the specific ring I’d had custom engraved for Marcus’s fortieth birthday — the one I’d picked up from the jeweler exactly nine days earlier, the one Marcus had been wearing for the first time that very afternoon, the one with a tiny inscription on the inside that only he and I knew existed.
I had seen that ring on his hand not twenty minutes earlier, refilling his drink, laughing at something his father had said.And now it was photographed, intimate and close, on a phone case my best friend had been carrying around our family gatherings for at least a year.
A year. Which meant this photo predated the ring itself — predated, by my quick, sick calculation, the actual gift I’d given him nine days ago.
Which meant either the case was recent, ordered specifically and quickly enough to incorporate a photo from that very week, or—
Ezoic
I didn’t let myself finish the thought standing in my own backyard, surrounded by forty guests and a four-year-old still grinning at his own cleverness.
“Ellie,” I said again. “Inside. Now, please.”
Something in my voice must have carried more than I intended, because her smile faltered immediately.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, following me toward the back door.I didn’t answer until we were inside, in the relative privacy of my kitchen, the party noise muffled behind the closed door.
“Show me your phone case,” I said.
