Chapter 10 - The Ring Was Worth Less Than What It Represented
I considered selling the diamond.
For weeks.
Every time I opened the safe and saw it, I felt sick.
Then Laurel surprised me.
“Don’t sell it yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want another impulsive thing done with money that was mine.”
Fair.
The ring was independently appraised.
Its current value was lower than the original purchase price once retail markup and market conditions were considered.
That annoyed me at first.
Then seemed strangely appropriate.
Conrad had taken $96,000 from Laurel’s assets to buy an object that had never been worth what he claimed it meant.
Eventually, as part of the repayment negotiations, I transferred the ring into an escrow arrangement.
Its value would count toward restitution.
Laurel asked:
“Does that bother you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you love it?”
“No.”
I thought about the question.
“Because I loved what I thought it meant.”
She nodded.
That was the grief.
Not jewelry.
History.
Nineteen anniversaries.
Photographs.
Conrad slipping the ring back onto my finger after surgery when my hands had swollen.
Laurel admiring it as a teenager.
Every memory now had a second layer.
But I refused to call all those years fake.
The ring’s origin was dishonest.
My love during those years had been real.
Two truths.
Again.
My therapist later told me:
“Betrayal does not require rewriting every happy memory as deception. It requires accepting that deception existed beside them.”
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That helped.
A little.
