A photograph slipped from the old cookbook onto the table.
Amelia picked it up.
The picture showed a woman’s hand resting on a windowsill. On one finger was an unusual circular ring.
Amelia glanced toward her grandmother.
The same ring sat on a chain around her neck.
On the back of the photograph were five words:
Helen and Robert. Our first home.
“Who’s Robert?”
Her grandmother’s knife stopped above the vegetables.
Amelia’s father turned from the sink.
“Where did you find that?”
“In this book.”
Helen set down the knife.
“Robert was my brother.”
“Why have I never met him?”
“Because we haven’t spoken for a very long time.”
The kitchen fell quiet.
After their mother died, Helen and Robert had argued about selling the family house. Letters became accusations. Telephone calls stopped.
The ring had belonged to their mother.
Robert believed Helen had taken it without asking.
“Did you?” Amelia asked.
Helen touched the chain.
“Yes.”
Her father looked surprised. He had grown up hearing a much more complicated version.
Helen sat down.
“I told myself she wanted me to have it. She may have. But I never asked him.”
Amelia looked at the photograph again.
“You lived together?”
“For a while. Before either of us married. We had one chair and a kettle that leaked.”
“Was it awful?”
Helen smiled.
“No.”
It took two weeks to locate Robert and another three days for Helen to make the call.
Amelia wasn’t there for it.
But the next Sunday, an elderly man stood on their doorstep holding a tin of biscuits.
Helen had placed the ring on the table between two cups.
Robert looked at it, then at his sister.
“I was angry about more than that.”
“I know.”
They sat for a long time.
Before leaving, Robert pushed the ring back toward her.
“Wear it,” he said. “It looks uncomfortable hanging there.”
End of Narrative
