Page 27 of After the Snap

“I’m here, Bug.”

“I can’t…” My voice catches again, forcing me to draw in another uneven breath before I try again. “I can’t find Mom’s ring.”

I wait for him to tell me I must have overlooked it somewhere or that it’ll turn up once I stop searching so hard. Instead, he gives me room to fall apart without rushing in to catch every piece before it hits the ground.

“Okay,” he whispers, his voice carrying the same steady calm he used whenever I called him in tears after my first anatomy practical. “We’re going to figure it out together.”

A sob escapes before I can swallow it back, and I pull the phone away from my ear, embarrassed by how quickly I’ve lost control. When I manage to lift it again, I stare at the empty place on my finger long enough that it might somehow change what I already know.

“I’ve looked everywhere. Emptied my purse. Checked the bathroom. I even looked under the bed, which doesn’t make sense because I know it couldn’t have gotten there, but I…” I shake my head, frustration burning behind my eyes. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“You don’t have to figure out the next step yet. I just need you to help me understand where we need to start.”

His words slow the frantic rhythm of my thoughts just enough that I can follow them.

“When do you remember having it last, Bug?”

I close my eyes, willing myself to picture yesterday the way I replay biochemical pathways before an exam, one step leading cleanly into the next. I remember twirling the ring around my finger before deciding to leave the apartment. I remember locking the door behind me, tossing my keys into my purse, and driving without any real destination in mind until the neon sign outside the bar caught my attention.

Each memory pulls the next behind it until I can’t think about the ring without thinking about him, until I’m standing beside his bed all over again. I remember slipping the ring off my finger and setting it beside my bracelets on the nightstand because I always take it off before I sleep. I remember gathering everything this morning as I hurried to leave before he woke up, shoving each piece back into the velvet pouch without looking closely enough to notice the one thing that mattered most wasn’t there. My stomach drops. It isn’t missing. I left it.

“I…” I press my lips together, searching for some version of the truth that doesn’t sound nearly as reckless when spoken out loud. “I don’t think I had it when I came home.”

The sentence hangs there, incomplete enough that I can almost pretend it explains everything. But Dad doesn’t ask me why I wasn’t here or what could’ve made me forget something I’ve worn nearly every day since I was eight years old. He simply waits long enough that I can hear the steady rhythm of his breathing through the phone.

“I didn’t come home last night.”

I wait for the questions I deserve. Where were you? Who were you with? What were you thinking? But they never come. Instead, Dad lets out a slow breath that crackles softly through the speaker.

“Do you think that’s where the ring is?”

I don’t answer right away because I already know the answer. It’s sitting on the nightstand beside his bed. I can picture it as clearly as if I were standing there again, the deep purple stone catching the first light of morning while I hurried to gather my things before he woke up. All I have to do is drive back, knock on his door, and ask for it.

Except it’s not that simple.

Last night was never supposed to follow me into today. We didn’t exchange names or make plans to see each other again. We shared one night and walked away exactly as we promised we would. Going back now would mean forcing it to become something it was never meant to be, and I don’t know which thought terrifies me more—that it’d change what happened between us or that it wouldn’t.

“Yes,” I whisper, barely able to speak past the knot in my throat.

“Okay,” Dad says gently, and I can almost picture him rubbing a hand over his jaw the way he always does when he’s thinking. “Then we’ll get it back.”

As if it’s that simple. I can already picture the surprise on his face when he opens the door after I snuck out of his house, believing we’d never see each other again. The memory twists painfully against everything I promised myself when I closed that front door behind me this morning.

“I’m sorry.”

I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for anymore. The ring. Leaving before he woke up. Maybe walking into that bar in the first place, because none of this happens if I’d stayed home and wallowed after checking my score.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Bug, you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“I do.” I scrub at my face with the heel of my hand, frustrated that every breath seems to catch behind my ribs before it ever reaches my lungs.

“I should’ve checked the nightstand before I left.” My words come faster now, stumbling over one another before I can decide which thought I'm trying to hold on to. “I should’ve slowed down. I should’ve…” My voice catches as my thoughts trip over one another. “I shouldn’t have gone out in the first place because if I’d just gone home, the ring would still be here.”

Finally, saying it out loud pulls everything else loose with it until I can’t tell where one mistake ends and another begins. I drag in a breath that catches painfully in my chest like my lungs have forgotten how to work. I know I’m talking. I know Dad is still on the other end of the phone, listening to every word, but I can’t seem to stop the thoughts long enough to decide which one matters. All of them do, yet none of them do at the same time. They just keep crashing into one another until all I can feel is the certainty that everything I’ve been trying so hard to hold together is slipping through my fingers.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I whisper, the words scraping their way out of my throat before I can swallow them back. “Everything just keeps… I keep trying to…I can’t fix any of it.”