The Ring Chapter 21 and 22

 

HEATHER LOUD POWER

 

“ENOUGH, I’M TIRED of hearing about that damned ring. Get over it.” Grayson continued looking at his phone, not Heather, as she strode across the room. Heather often swore that someday the phone would replace his hand.

“As the older daughter the ring belongs to me.” Heather had just come back from the library. She had time to hang up her coat. A ray of sunshine through the window above the front door did nothing to improve her mood.

During the reading group for grades one-three, Bobby Adler had thrown up and she was the one who had to clean it up.

People who visited the periodical section hadn’t put The New York Times, The Washington Post, nor the Miami Herald back together. They had left the papers intertwined on a table near the periodical section.

Most of her workdays were pleasant. She had chosen to be a librarian because she thought it would be all pleasant conversations about books. No politics.

Well, she had been wrong about that.

The head librarian and her immediate assistant headed up two political camps with the head librarian Dorothy wanting to keep things the way they had been when the library was founded and the Heather Camp, the assistant, wanting to modernize.

On the way home she had stopped at Henry’s to convince him to convince her sister to give her the ring.

“If you want it back, ask her yourself. I would suggest not do it in public,” Henry said.

Henry could have done a lot of things, said a lot of things to Heather. He could have offered to take her to dinner, which he sometimes did when Grayson worked late. He could have hugged her and told her she was right. He could have offered to talk to Margo, but instead he said, “You’re being unreasonable. It’s a ring, a stupid ring, for God’s sake.”

Her anger flared. She didn’t need advice from Henry. She just needed him to get the ring back. Instead of saying anything, she slammed his door.

Instead of cooling down on the five-minute drive to her house, her anger reached a boiling point.

Finding Grayson sitting on the couch looking at his phone when he could have started dinner added gas to the flames of her anger.

Maybe she should have mentioned dinner but instead she started spouting about the ring.

“Enough! I’m tired of hearing about that damned ring. Get over it.” He went back to texting or whatever he had been doing.

Stomping upstairs into their bedroom, Grayson’s pajamas on the window seat not in the clothes hamper didn’t improve her mood. She wanted to throw them out the window. She had done that earlier in their marriage when he hadn’t picked up his clothes.

A shower would cool her off, she decided. Carefully putting her clothes in the hamper and the ease of it only increased her annoyance with Grayson.

The water ran just a bit too cool and then a bit too hot when she adjusted it to beat down on her head. What was she, a fucking Goldilocks?

Her shampoo smelled of almonds, something that cost double ordinary shampoo, but she loved its smell.

As she rinsed herself off, she said out loud, “I swear to God, I’m going to get that ring back.”

ROBERT PARKER STEVENSON

 

“MRS. HEATHER POWERS to see you Robert,” Miriam said.

“Put her in the conference room, please. Offer tea or coffee.”

Conference room. Robert had to laugh at himself. When he was at the big law firm in Boston, the conference room was nicknamed the cave. Now his entire legal suit was on the second floor over a clothing shop.

And the conference room? There was his grandmother’s oak table that would fit 10 people at a crowded Thanksgiving meal. His wife had scoured the countryside to find matching chairs with pillows that she had covered by matching the fabric to the floor-to-ceiling drapes. They’d painted the walls an off white. He was still amazed that the results didn’t look like the cheap scavenged items but a professional conference room.

His marriage had recovered from his drop in salary that family law provided instead of corporate law. Mostly because his second wife supported him in what he wanted to do. Robert attributed her support to the found time with his wife and son.

He preferred the divorces and wills to screwing a business in a takeover.

What could Heather want? Her mother’s will was settled. The family house was sold and the profits divided among the two sisters.

He adjusted his smile as he opened the conference room door. He and Heather had been in the same high school class. They both had done university in Boston, she at Simmons and he at Boston University on scholarship and more hours working on odd jobs then existed in God’s Little Green Earth.

“Heather, good to see you. What can I do for you?” He hoped she wasn’t there for a divorce. He liked Grayson, although found him a bit dull, but the type labelled a good man.

As Robert sat down, he arranged a yellow legal pad and the pen his mother had given him the day he passed the Massachusetts bar.

“I want to sue my sister.”

His brow wrinkled.

Heather gave the history of the family ring and how it should have gone to her.

“There was nothing in the will?”

“My mother must have forgotten and then gave it to Henry Willis who probably was confused.”

Shit, he hated cases like that. “Why don’t you just ask Margo?”

“She wants the ring, too. Besides she’s in Europe at the moment on some la-de-la exhibition.” Robert read the resentment in her voice.

“Do you have an idea of the value?”

“None, but that’s not the point. It’s family.”

Robert almost pointed out that Margo was family too.

“Heather, I can do a mediation, but I’m your friend and her friend too. It will cost you probably more in your relationship than the ring is worth.”

Good lord, the woman was pouting. She tried to remember how Heather had been with a clique of snorting girls in high school. Baton squad girls and cheerleaders. Bitches.

“What does Grayson say?”

“Now that’s not something a man should ask in today’s day and age.”

“You’re right.” He wanted to wind this up. “I’m going to suggest you think about it for a few days and then get back to me if you want to go ahead. Meanwhile I will think of what we could do and we could meet in two weeks. I’m out straight with divorce cases until then.” It wasn’t true, but sometimes delaying was a great strategy.

As Heather was halfway out the door, she said, “I’m not going to change my mind.”