I took it down.
Inside were photographs.
Plano church steps.
Our first apartment.
Laura with paint in her hair the week Laurel Row opened.
A Gulf Coast sunrise in 2009 with her head on my shoulder.
A Christmas card.
A ticket stub.
Small pieces of a life.
I went to my dresser.
Opened the top drawer.
The wedding band lay inside.
The same plain gold ring I had placed on a restaurant table months earlier.
Laura had returned it.
I had carried it from the old house without knowing what else to do.
I picked it up.
The groove it had left on my finger had mostly disappeared.
The ring itself was scratched.
Ordinary.
I placed it inside the cedar box.
Did not throw it away.
I have never understood the idea that an ended marriage must be rewritten as wasted time.
Eighteen years were not fake because the final year contained betrayal.
Laura had loved me.
I had loved her.
We built real things.
Shared real mornings.
Buried people we loved.
Helped each other.
Failed each other.
Eventually hurt each other badly enough that continuing would have required pretending dignity was less important than duration.
A life can be real and still end.
I closed the cedar box.
Put it back on the shelf.
Several weeks later, Walt and I were sitting on the bleachers after basketball.
He was retaping one knee.
“You ever marrying again?” he asked.
I bounced the ball twice.
“Maybe.”
“That sounded enthusiastic.”
I smiled.
“If she asks me before she laughs.”
Walt frowned.