For a few seconds I only looked at it. She had not mentioned returning it in the breakup text, and I had not asked. Yet there it was, the physical proof of a promise we had made and she no longer intended to keep. I picked it up carefully, examined the setting for damage, and slipped it into the small box she had left behind.
Then I placed the box in my jacket pocket. I did not take photographs of the empty drawers or search through anything she had left. I already knew enough. There was no mystery in those rooms that I wanted to solve.
I showered, changed, and went through the filing cabinet for the original receipt. It was exactly where I remembered putting it, behind the documents for my truck. The paper had begun to fade along one edge, but the date and purchase amount were still readable. I sat at the kitchen table holding the receipt in one hand and the ring box in the other. I had paid eight thousand four hundred dollars because I believed I was marking the beginning of a lifetime commitment. Now I was trying to determine how much of that money could be recovered, which was not the kind of arithmetic I had expected to be doing after a forty-eight-hour shift.
I sat in the quiet apartment for a few minutes before going out. At nine, shortly after the jeweler opened, I arrived with the ring, the purchase documents, and the certificate that came with the stone. The associate remembered me, or said she did, and asked whether Jade had liked the ring. I told her the engagement had ended and asked what options I had. Her expression changed immediately, and she invited me to sit while she reviewed the original sales paperwork. The return period had passed, but the store offered a buyback or credit arrangement for certain pieces after an inspection.
The jeweler explained the figures without dressing them up. I would not receive my full purchase price in cash. The setting could be evaluated for resale, and the diamond could be credited toward future purchases under the store's policy. After she called the owner and confirmed the available terms, I accepted a store-credit arrangement because I preferred closing that task to keeping the ring in a drawer while I debated every alternative.
We completed the paperwork, and she handed me a receipt confirming that the store had taken possession of the ring. By Thursday the transaction would be fully recorded in their system. The credit was worth less than what I had paid, but the loss was not the point.
I walked out at about a quarter to ten with a thin envelope in my hand. The jewelry store was on a street I had driven along many times without thinking about it, but the morning seemed unusually quiet. A delivery truck idled beside the curb, and a