I thought about her driving forty-five minutes.
I thought about her knees shaking.
I thought about her standing anyway.
I thought about a retired teller who had not slept since she read the county paper.
Who had called a stranger to say: it wasn’t you.
I thought about the emerald ring with the two small diamonds.
My grandmother had brought it from Poland in 1952.
She had worn it to America.
She had worn it through every version of her life in the new country.
She had given it to me when I was twenty-three and she said: this is for the woman you are going to become.
She said it with the specific confidence of someone who could already see who I was going to be.
I thought about the woman who had worn my grandmother’s ring to a bank four times.
I thought about being told I had lost it at work.
