“Sharon,” he said through the door.
His voice was so gentle that somehow it made me even angrier.
“I’m not going to lose you now after all we’ve accomplished and been through.”
I pressed my forehead against the cold tile and closed my eyes.
A moment later, there was a soft knock.
I didn’t answer.
Then I heard something slide gently across the floor.
I looked down.
An envelope had been pushed beneath the bathroom door.
I picked it up with shaking hands and opened it.
Inside was a photograph of a ring.
I recognized it immediately.
My grandmother’s engagement ring.
The one my aunt had sold nearly a decade earlier during a terrible family fallout.
The one I had cried about during my second date with Ian.
The one I had never mentioned again.
My breath caught.
“Sharon?” Ian’s voice came softly through the door. “Please open up.”
I stared at the photograph.
Then I unlocked the door.
Ian stood there in his hotel robe, his hair sticking up in six different directions.
He looked less like a man who had been caught hiding something and more like a guilty puppy who had chewed up a shoe.
“Rosa,” he said with a sigh.
“Who?”
“Rosa. One of your grandmother’s friends.”
I stared at him.
“She helped me find it.”
He took a breath.
“Her cousin works at the jewelry shop. It took almost a year of payments.”
I looked down at the photograph again.
“I was going to give it to you on the beach in Santorini.”
I blinked.
“The key?”
“Safe-deposit box.”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t want it sitting in our apartment where you’d find it.”
I laughed.
It came out somewhere between relief and disbelief.
“Ian, I almost googled divorce lawyers over dry cleaning!”
“I realized that.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“Ian…”
“I was going to give it to you.”
“So the note?”
“Rosa slipped me the final receipt and the key at the rehearsal dinner. She wrote that note thanking me for letting her be part of it.”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“She told me to hold the secret until Santorini.”
“And you forgot the evidence in your tuxedo.”
He winced.
“I forgot to burn the evidence.”
I stared at him.
Then I started laughing.
The fear that had been crushing my chest for the past hour finally began to loosen.
I reached for his hand.
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you, babe.”
“It’s okay.”
“No. I broke our rule.”
“So did I.”
“You did it for a surprise.”
“I know.”
“And I immediately assumed the worst.”
“You had a pretty convincing collection of evidence.”
I laughed again.
