He did not look up immediately. He rubbed the back of his neck, his skin red from the wind.
“She told me she wanted to show you the ring,” he said.
“Where did you get the money for a ring like that, Ben?” I asked. My fingers found the silver strap of my watch, and I adjusted the metal band until it pinched my skin. “You told me last month you were behind on the truck payments.”
“I saved it,” he said, his voice flat.
“Two hundred dollars doesn’t just appear in a drawer,” I said. “Not when you’re working thirty hours a week at the mill.”
“It was enough,” he said.
“Did my father give you that money?”
Ben finally looked at me, his eyes dark under the shadow of his cap.
“I thought you of all people would understand this,” he said.
“Understand what? That you’re marrying my sister when three years ago you were sitting on my porch talking about our future?”
“This is Rosie’s future, Clara,” he said. He reached for the driver’s side door handle, his hand steady on the chrome. “She deserves to have a home of her own.”
“And what about what you deserve?” I asked.
“I have what I need,” he said.
He got into the cab and started the engine, the headlamps cutting two yellow circles into the gathering dusk.
My bedroom was cold, the heat not yet turned on for the season. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling where the light from the streetlamp outside cast a pattern of bare branches across the white plaster.
On my desk, the old photograph of Ben and me at seventeen sat in its silver frame, the faces blurred by the shadow of the lamp.
I turned my head away from the desk, my cheek pressing into the cool cotton of my pillow.
For five years, I had kept a yellow ribbon from the county fair in the back of my jewelry box, the one he had won for the best steer and handed to me without a word. I had kept the postcard he sent from Chicago with the picture of the lake, where he had written only three lines about the wind.
