Narrator: June A. | Massachusetts, USA
I found my wedding ring in the flower bed while wearing my wedding ring.
The one in the soil was scratched and black in the grooves. Same narrow band, same tiny dent beside the stone. Inside was our anniversary, followed by my husband’s initials. I checked them with the kitchen magnifier he uses for repairing watches.
He was alive when I found it. People always assume this is a widow’s story. We were both in our sixties, arguing about a leaking gutter, and he was standing at the sink eating crackers while I held out the two rings.
He thought I’d bought a copy. Then he saw the dent. He had made that dent carrying a filing cabinet down a staircase when I was pregnant with our daughter. He’d borrowed my ring for safekeeping because my fingers were swollen. It was a family story, not something a jeweller would know.
We took both rings to a shop. Same size, same metal, same maker’s mark. The jeweller couldn’t tell us anything useful beyond saying the garden one had spent a long time in wet soil.
I kept it in a jar on the dresser. It bothered my husband more than it bothered me. Sometimes he’d turn the jar so he couldn’t see it from the bed.
A year later I lost the ring I’d been wearing. I had been gardening, of course. We lifted the edging, emptied the compost bin, borrowed a metal detector. Nothing. My husband accused me of putting it in the jar and forgetting. The jar was still sealed with the tape he had put over the lid himself.
Now I wear the one from the soil. I expected that to make the whole thing feel settled. It hasn’t. Last week I noticed a fresh scratch across its underside and remembered seeing that exact scratch on it when I first dug it up.
I’m not frightened of dying. I’m frightened that the rest of my life may already have happened somewhere, including all the small things I’m pleased to have chosen for myself.
