The Ring

1964

“Oh, God. Oh, God!”

Her sun-browned, youthful hands dropped the feisty fish into the storage tank almost absentmindedly. The five-minute struggle with the creature lost its exhilaration the instant she realized her wedding ring was missing. Her agitation rocked the small boat wildly.

He watched her staring at her naked finger in horror, and knew instantly what had happened. Losing a ring in the ocean was akin to tossing it in a volcano or flinging it into a chasm.

They’d only been married a month, and the ring had been her mother’s, worn until she’d died of cancer just last year.

There was simply nothing to say.

- - -

2004

His weathered, age-spotted hands shook slightly as he reeled in a small fish.

“That one will make a nice supper,” she told him, smiling wanly.

They were thinking of the ring, and both of them knew it. For forty years they’d returned to the same spot, just outside the bay, in remembrance -- as if to get close to her mother as well as to the ring itself. Neither ever mentioned this; neither had to.

At home he cleaned the small fish carefully with a silver blade, and she sat across from him and watched. One cut revealed something strange - a metal object.

“What’s this?” he pondered, reaching for a cloth. She leaned in to take a look.

“It’s a ri --“

It can’t be…

“Oh, God. Oh, God!”

He breathed a prayer and rinsed the ring carefully. Then he slipped it onto her finger where it fit perfectly, shining like something miraculous and new.

There was simply nothing to say.