Looking back on the articles from my mother's death twelve years ago, Aislynn and I started to cry a little bit. We read over the banns announcing our birth and felt the hope and promise the words created. Then, all that shattered the day Mom died. We were six and didn't understand why Mom wasn't coming home and why Dad was crying. He never cried. After the funeral, it kinda hit home that Mom wasn't coming back. Aislynn and I cried our hearts out and didn't feel better for weeks.
"Bethie, Mom died twelve years ago. Aren't you over it yet?" Lynn asked me. She saw the misty-ness in my eyes and felt, like always, my sadness as her own. She and I were quite connected, being twins, and knew when the other felt strong emotions. I shook my head in reply to her and placed the slightly yellowed newspaper clippings back in the box. We had been cleaning out the attic of our three story home, more of a mansion really, when we had come across this box. I was surprised to see the faint tear spots on them. I wondered if Dad ever came up here when the grief became too much for him.
"Lynn, you know how much Dad loved Mom. They always spun stories of how they met and how Dad got the ring she always wore," I said. "You think he's over her death yet?" I had pointed out the tear stains to her earlier, but Lynn didn't want to believe that sadness could last so long. It was one of her failings, while one of mine was hanging on to sadness. Opposite sides of the same coin, really. She and I definitely were well-matched as sisters. Lynn shook her head and replied, "It was twelve years ago. Time marches on."
Getting up and dusting her knees off, Lynn shook her long red hair out of her eyes. She got Mom's hair while I got Dad's shaggy brown hair. I continued to go through the box and underneath the clippings, I found a pair of silver rings. The bands were slightly tarnished, but didn't look dingy. They actually looked as if they should have that dark, gray-silver sheen. Both rings had a clear green stone in it, but one was darker than the other. Aislynn finally looked interested in what was in the boxes and plopped back down beside me. She took the ring I passed to her, with the darker green stone. She studied it, as I studied mine, and raised her gray eyes to mine.
"Do you know what these look like?" Lynn asked, breathless. I nodded, too shocked to speak at first. Then, slipping the ring onto my left index finger, I replied, "They look like Mom's engagement ring. The one she was buried with." My voice trailed off at the last few words and both of us were speechless as our gray eyes met once again. What could this mean?