As her grandmother helped adjust her veil, Elise noticed the gold band on the dressing table.
“I thought this was yours.”
Her grandmother reached for it too quickly.
Elise turned it toward the light.
Inside the band was a tiny engraved star.
Across the room, her fiancé, Marcus, looked up.
“What is it?”
Elise pointed toward the framed wedding photograph beside the flowers. Her late mother was wearing the same ring.
“You told me Mum lost it.”
Her grandmother sat down.
For several seconds, the only sound was the movement of guests outside the door.
“She asked me to keep it safe.”
“Then why didn’t you give it back?”
Elise’s parents had separated when she was little. Her mother had eventually wanted the ring returned—not to wear, but to decide for herself what to do with it.
Her grandmother had refused.
“I thought if I kept it, she might reconsider.”
“The marriage?”
She nodded.
Elise looked at the photograph.
Her mother had spent years being told she had given up too quickly.
Even now, on Elise’s wedding morning, relatives offered advice about patience that sounded suspiciously like endurance.
“She didn’t lose it,” Elise said.
“No.”
“You kept something that was hers because you didn’t like her decision.”
Her grandmother’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Marcus remained quiet beside the window.
Finally, Elise placed the ring back on the table.
“I’m not wearing it today.”
“I understand.”
“But I am taking it home.”
After the wedding, Elise put the ring beside her mother’s photograph.
Weeks later, her grandmother visited carrying a letter.
“For your mother,” she said. “Things I should have said while she could hear them.”
Elise read it after she left.
Then she placed it beneath the photograph.
When Marcus came home, he found her sitting there.
He took the chair beside her.
After a while, Elise reached for his hand.
End of Narrative
