But Luke just shook his head. “You’ll never accept her, will you?”
I decided to rent a safe-deposit box first thing Monday morning. Susan’s jewelry would never leave that vault until River’s wedding day.
“Hey, Dad.
How was your trip?”
I sat down beside her. “River, honey, I need to tell you something.”
I explained everything. The theft.
The police. The screaming match.
River listened quietly, her face serious. “She called Mom a dead lady?”
“I’m afraid so.”
River nodded slowly.
Those words hit me harder than anything else that day.
“And Dad?” River looked up from her math homework. “When I do get married someday, I want to know the whole story.
About how you kept Mom’s promise even when it was hard.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” I said, squeezing her hands.
Amber never apologized after that… not once.
Instead, she spent the next day posting cryptic Instagram stories about “fake family” and “controlling father figures.” She painted herself as the victim, the poor girl attacked by her crazy future stepfather-in-law.
Luke barely speaks to me now. Alice tried to mediate, but what was there to mediate?
Yesterday, I was cleaning out my closet when I found something I’d forgotten about. A small jewelry box tucked behind some old sweaters. Inside was Susan’s wedding ring, the one she’d taken off during chemo and never put back on.
I brought it to River.
“This was your mom’s too.”
River slipped the simple gold band onto her finger.
It was a little loose but it looked lovely.
“Tell me about her wedding day,” she said.
So I did. I told her about Susan’s nervous laugh as she walked down the aisle. About how the jewelry set had been her grandmother’s wedding gift.
And how she’d dreamed of passing it down to her daughter someday.
“She would have loved this moment, wouldn’t she?” River asked.
“She’s here for alContinue reading…
