Lost: One irreplaceable ring given to me by my mother.
Suspect: An untrustworthy college roommate.
Problem: How to tell Mom the ring was missing while I was home on summer break.
I was a wreck. Dad gave Mom the ring way back when they were dating, a delicate white-gold band with a gorgeous emerald-cut ruby and a small diamond in the center. Mom entrusted it to me when I went off to college in Des Moines. I didn’t wear it much because the ruby was loose in its setting and I didn’t want anything to happen to that ring. Then one day I couldn’t find it.
I tore through my room in a panic. “Has anyone seen my ring?” I asked my roommates. I must have looked like I was about to have a nervous breakdown. They all just shook their heads. Except one. “Ring?” she said. “What ring?”
A lot of things had “gone missing” since she moved in, but my other roommates and I could never prove anything. We couldn’t just accuse her. So I stopped looking for the ring and started praying.
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Now came the moment of truth. I’d been home in Belle Plaine for a day. Mom and her coffee-club pals were waiting in the kitchen for me to tell them all about my college experience. I hadn’t said a peep about the ring. Sooner or later Mom would ask, probably even wonder why I wasn’t wearing it now.
Just then my best friend, Carol, dropped by. Her mother was one of the ladies in the kitchen.
“Am I glad to see you!” I said, steering her into the living room. I could use the moral support. That’s when I saw it. Right there on her finger. The ring.
“Where did you get that?” I said with a gasp.
“Like it? Mom gave it to me. Here, try it on.”
The ruby wiggled in its setting.
How did the ring get to Belle Plaine all the way from Des Moines?
“I was in Des Moines on business and did a little antiquing,” Carol’s mom explained, after we burst into the kitchen and told the story. “I saw the ring in a pawnshop—caught my eye right away. How did your ring end up there?”
I had a pretty good idea. How it could come back to me? That was the amazing part.
