It was a small velvet box, the kind that could only hold one thing. My hands started to tremble as I pried it open right there in the hospital corridor. Inside was a delicate ring, but not an engagement ring, and not my style at all. It was a tiny band sized for a child, set with two small birthstones. For one terrible moment my mind raced through every awful possibility. A secret. Another family. A woman I didn’t know. My legs felt weak, and I had to lean against the wall to steady myself.

Then I noticed a folded slip of paper tucked into the lid of the box. I unfolded it with shaking fingers. It was a receipt from a jeweler, dated that very morning, and beneath it, in Lucas’s familiar handwriting, was a note he had clearly been carrying to show me later. My eyes moved across the first line, and everything I had been afraid of collapsed into something else entirely. I pushed open the door to his room, the box still in my hand, and Lucas looked up at me from the hospital bed with a bandaged wrist and a sheepish, exhausted smile. “You weren’t supposed to see that yet,” he said softly.