The Year She Left. Kerry Kelly

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      Darkstar Fiction

      An imprint of Napoleon & Company

      Toronto, Ontario, Canada

      www.napoleonandcompany.com

      Printed in Canada

      12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Kelly, Kerry, date-

       The year she left / Kerry Kelly.

      eBook Digital ISBN: 978-1-894917-92-6

      I. Title.

      PS8621.E4416Y42 2008 C813’.6 C2008-905619-1

      For those about to rock

       September

      It was September when Stuart found out she was gone. Or rather, that he was going. He’d come home one day to find that Emily had left him a note on the kitchen table of their condo. Her condo. She’d made the down-payment.

      Emily hadn’t addressed him as “Dear”. She told him later that she felt he deserved better than a cliché. He’d thought it unfortunate that she didn’t think he deserved better than to be simultaneously dumped and evicted in a letter, especially after he found out that her decision to end things had actually been made months earlier. During a week he’d been out of town. On the day he was set to return. The day she had realized her engagement ring was missing.

      She’d spent a whole day searching for it, starting with the obvious places; the nightstand, the soap dish and finally resorting to unhooking the bathroom drainpipe. But the ring was gone, and not even her prayers to St. Anthony were bringing it back.

      It was a devastating loss; it was a beautiful ring, one sparkling kagrat riding high on a white-gold setting. Platinum was what you used to build missiles, she’d told him. She was vehemently opposed to warheads,and gold was more romantic anyway. Not gold-gold, though. It didn’t suit her skin tone.

      But that was not really why she was so upset. She was upset because she could not remember when exactly the little band of metal, rock and promise had slipped off her finger. It was a colleague who had brought it to her attention, asking her if she took it off when she typed.

      As she said, “No, I always have it on,” she realized she didn’t. Her initial reaction was more curiosity than tragedy, until she saw the horrified expression on the other woman’s face, a horror she then tried to mimic, rather unconvincingly.

      She loved the ring. There was no reason she shouldn’t have, since she was the one who had picked it out, shortly after their third anniversary. They had moved from their apartment into the condo she’d selected for them as well. Stuart had been a doll about it, telling her she had better taste than he did anyway, which was true, and that it was her money they were using for the downpayment, which was also true. She’d thought it was very modern of him to say so, not to feel threatened by her financial advantage.

      She’d wanted to be engaged before they moved in, but she’d also wanted Stuart to pay for the ring. Some traditions had to be upheld. It had taken him longer than expected to scrounge up the money. Stuart had never really taken to a career. He had a degree in English Literature and a burning desire to be an artist. His painting never resulted in saleable pieces, just an unwillingness to get tied into some nine-to-five career that would make it impossible for him to focus on his true calling. He actually made his money designing websites for the companies of more successful family members and acquaintances.

      When he did finally present her with the ring, they were at their favourite restaurant. He handed it to her in an antique ring box, looking up at her from bended knee, as per the orders Emily had given her best friend to give to him. It was perfect.

      Until that day in late May, she had barely taken it off. In the very beginning, she hadn’t wanted to wear it at night, since it tended to get caught in her expensive sheets and more expensively-styled hair, but he looked so wounded whenever he saw her slip it off that she’d started wearing it all of the time. Until…

      She sat at her desk that day, trying to figure out when it had fallen off her hand. That morning, the evening before, the day before that? She had no idea.

      As she tried to recall the last time she’d seen the ring, she had been a bit shocked to find that for all the months it had been a part of her, she couldn’t really picture it on her finger. Couldn’t quite remember what it would have looked like seeing it sitting there winking back at her.

      She didn’t have much time to think about it. From the corner of her eye, she could see Laurel, her colleague, watching for a more suitable reaction with an air of expectation

      Emily dropped to her knees behind her desk in a move designed both to hide her from view and to show a genuine feminine upset that the ring was missing. As she crawled around, aimlessly patting the carpet, the thought of asking Laurel when she’d last seen the ring briefly crossed her mind. She’d obviously been keeping tabs on it. But Emily was too afraid to risk further gaping from someone who was already staring down at her with all the judgment of an Olympian god. Emily could feel it even through the solid maple of the desktop.

      The fury of a woman scorned was absolutely nothing to that of one overlooked, any single woman could tell you that. And here was a woman who had been handed the proof that she was worth loving tossing that proof around like it was nothing.

      She then toyed with the idea of bursting into tears. She was going to be fodder for the lunch-time gossip anyway, so it would be best to be portrayed in a favourable light, but she wasn’t sure she could pull it off. Instead she stayed tucked under her desk, murmuring concerns and scratching at the pile of the rug until she heard the door click shut.

      Grabbing her coat and keys, she headed for home. The hunt was on. She couldn’t have been long without it, she reasoned. Stuart had only been gone a week, and she must have had it on when he left.

      He would have noticed its absence. He had a tendency to stare at it, mesmerized, twisting it to see the sparkle. “This is how much I love you,” he’d tell her, holding the hand up to better catch the light. It wasn’t as gross as it sounded. Not really, though it had always made her cringe to hear it. It was just that Stuart was not a wealthy guy. For this purchase, he’d really buckled down, taking every job he could get and funneling all of the money he could into what he called the “Promise Fund”. He’d given her everything the day he had proposed. The ring. A promise. His heart.

      And she had gone and lost it. She’d shed it like a snakeskin and not even noticed. How could she tell him that? How could she ever explain it?

      Once home, she began a panicked search of her condo. Their condo, she corrected herself. She was always having to correct herself. She started in the office, strewing papers and yanking on drawer handles. She did not find it.

      In the bedroom,