They'd taken his wedding ring on the first day.
Jeff had been instructed to strip, which he'd done with no complaint. He already ached from the unnecessarily violent capture, and was unsurprised to discover bruise after bruise as he peeled off his flight suit. It was a cold room, and he remembered shivering quite violently as he waited for them to pass him the damp, old tracksuit that would become a second skin for the next two years.
At that point his ring had been so comfortable and so familiar, that he'd been surprised when they pointed out he was still wearing it.
"It doesn't come off," He'd said. In truth, he'd never tried.
It had been the wrong thing to say. The burlier of the two men had reached into a bag and pulled out a pair of wire cutters. To his shame, his initial reaction hadn't been for the loss of the ring but fear that they intended to take the whole finger.
The wire cutters had not been strong enough for the job, and had hacked through the ring for several minutes. It had severely nicked the skin, leaving a cut almost the shape of an arrow pointing towards his hand.
The remains of the ring had been tossed into the same bag as the wire cutters, and he'd never seen it again.
Now, Jeff leans against the crisp glass fence looking out at the Pacific. Absentmindedly, he traces an index finger around where the band used to be. There's still a ridge that has never quite healed, but more obvious is the scar tissue the shape of an arrow.
Truth be told, he feels the loss of the ring more acutely than he'd ever felt its presence.
He's never been an overly sentimental man: his commitment to his wife had been something they'd both felt, experienced, and worked hard to maintain. It wasn't something that he'd ever needed any monument of jewellery to remember. The five pairs of little feet running up and down the stairs all day were reminder-enough that he was a committed family man.
Wedding rings are a symbol for strangers rather than the wearers. In the early days of Tracy Industries he'd spent a lot of time on the road. He recalls more than one occasion where he'd been exhausted, propping up a bar late at night in some strange city, and a fellow traveller had taken the seat beside him – smiling with her teeth, tucking her hair behind her ear, laughing at all his jokes. He'd smile and laugh back, but pick up his glass with the left hand brandishing the ring towards her like a medieval priest with a cross. Thanks but no thanks.
It had been functional.
When someone dies and their body and voice are gone, the objects that they leave behind start to gain more significance. The things they once touched are the only things left.
He doubts that the boys had ever given any of their mother's jewellery a second glance while she was alive, but after she'd gone and he'd given her wedding and engagement rings to his two oldest sons their eyes had pooled with tears and they'd both sworn to keep them close forever.
Jeff had never tried to remove his own ring, partly out of duty and partly for the same reason he'd worn it in the first place. The hurt was so deep that he's been romantically closed for business ever since.
He misses the way the wedding band used to make his hand look so ordinary. He misses the way it felt like a shield against emotions that threatened to take control. Everything is fine, it said.
The ugly ridge and visible scar on his wedding finger though, now expose something he'd worked hard to keep from the world. The internal agony at the loss of his wife that will never heal is now on show for anyone to see – his employees, his mother, his sons.
Of all the things his captors took from him including time, freedom, and blood, this is the one that makes him feel the most angry: his wedding ring. His right to pretend that everything is OK.