He nodded slowly.
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you understood it until now.”
He looked away.
I gently pushed the velvet box back toward him.
“Keep the ring.”
“Please, Elizabeth.”
“I don’t want it as payment for what I lost. And I don’t want to carry it home and spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been.”
He began to sob.
“I never stopped thinking about you.”
“I believe you,” I replied. “But thinking about someone and doing right by them are not the same thing.”
The room became silent.
Then he asked the question I had been dreading.
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
I looked at the frail man beside the window.
Part of me wanted to say yes. Part of me wanted to give him the comfort he was asking for, simply because I knew how frightening it was to face the end of life.
