One slow Saturday, amid the steady hum of new contracts, a small thing happened that made the breath go out of my lungs in the warm, pleasant way of a bell tone. Mark came home with no ring on his finger, but with a small, slightly bent tin box he’d picked up from a secondhand shop on the way back from a site visit. He handed it to me like a man passing across a fragile thing.
“What’s this?” I asked, turning the box in my hands. It was unremarkable—dents, the ghost of a decal worn away—but inside, folded beneath a scrap of tissue, was a note in his handwriting: For us. For when we need a place to put something we don’t want to forget.
I felt like a child getting a secret. My throat tightened. “I love it,” I said, simple because I could say nothing more accurate.
“Good,” he said. He sat
