My Soul to Keep

by Melanie Wells

  I picked it up, examining this one more closely. The paper was expensive. Not the kind of wrapping paper you get at the drugstore. The kind you buy from specialty stores that sell handmade journals and twenty-dollar soap. The ribbon was fresh, unwrinkled satin. Off-white paper, off-white ribbon. Lovely and tasteful.

  Warily I pulled one end of the ribbon and eased the paper away from the box. The box was generic, as the others had been. Thick pressed white cardboard, expensively made. But no store logo on it. Nothing that would identify where it came from.

  I tilted open the lid, took a peek, and dropped the box. Inside was an engagement ring. It was platinum, an antique setting, with a beautiful 1.2-carat diamond set among a few dainty smaller stones.

  The reason I knew the weight of the diamond is that I knew the ring. Intimately. It was my mother’s ring. And it was supposed to be on her finger, six feet under at the cemetery outside her hometown.

  I’d decided to bury her with it instead of keeping it for myself. I’d seen it on her finger before they closed the lid. That was two years ago last March.

  I fished my new necklace out of my purse, opening that box carefully, suspiciously. The necklace was still there, funky and chunky. I took it out of the box and closed my fingers around it in a fist.

  I got out of the truck, slammed that noisy door, and marched back to the water’s edge. I stood on my launching rock and wound up, throwing that necklace as far as I could into the spring. It was a good, long throw, reminiscent of years of childhood lessons from my brother. The necklace hit with barely a plop and sank to the bottom.

  I sat down on the rock for a minute. Queasy and green with emotion.

  I waited there until my head stopped spinning, then walked out to the parking lot and got in my truck. It started with its usual rumble, reminding me that I needed a new muffler too. But it got me home, which is where I wanted to be.

  I pulled up in my driveway in Dallas four hours later, relieved at the impending comfort of my house and looking forward to a warm, soapy bath. I unloaded my gear, tucking the box with the ring in it carefully into my swim bag, and hauled all my stuff to the front door.

  And there, hanging on my front doorknob, was that necklace, still dripping with the cold water of Barton Springs.