The Ring That Paid for Her Nights

I closed my eyes for a second. When I opened them, Gary had set my ring down on a square of black felt and folded his hands on top of the counter.

“How low does she go?” he asked me.

“Forties, some nights. Last night was forty-eight. She couldn’t hold the juice box.”

He nodded once. He did not ask me why I didn’t take her daddy to court. He did not ask me anything else.

He opened the register, then a drawer under it, and he counted out seventeen hundred-dollar bills onto the glass, one at a time, turning each one face up. Then he wrote me a receipt, a real one, for the sale of one gold band, and had me sign it, and copied my driver’s license like he was supposed to.

Then he picked up my ring.

He did not put it in the case with the others. He reached under the counter and came up with a small brown coin envelope, the kind banks use. He slid my ring inside and licked the flap and pressed it shut with his thumb.

Then he picked up a pencil, looked at Emma, and said, “Sweetheart, what’s your daddy’s name?”

“Brent Lund,” she said. “He sells boats at the marine place by the river.”

Gary wrote it on the envelope. Then he put the envelope in his shirt pocket, not the safe, not the case, and buttoned the pocket.

“Go get your girl her pump,” he said to me. “Go on.”

The Afternoon

I drove straight to my bank on Central Avenue and deposited seventeen hundred dollars in cash, and asked the teller to please hurry. Then I called the supplier from the truck in the bank lot and read them my debit card number with my hands shaking.

The whole bill. Three thousand four hundred and eleven dollars. Paid. “It’ll ship overnight,” the woman on the phone said. “Your trainer can start her Thursday.”

I hung up and put my forehead on the steering wheel.

“Mom?” Emma said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good, bug. I’m really good.”

“Can we still get a Frosty?”

We got two. We ate them in the truck in the Wendy’s parking lot with the heater running, and Emma bolused for hers on Gus, pretend insulin for real ice cream, and laughed about it.

I kept looking at my left hand on the wheel. The white dent was still there where the ring had been.