Diamonds

I expected the rain and was ready for it. What I didn’t expect was the hailstorm, which damaged my roof and a few windows. I hid in the basement soon after the first hail hit. There were no windows, but I could still hear the noise.

I enjoyed the rain and always had. I liked to sit with the window open, watching the tiny droplets fall on the ground, finding the sound strangely comforting. It wasn’t too loud, unlike the sounds of a storm. It was loud, unpredictable, and scary. That’s how I found myself in the basement. Again. Because I was scared.

A little pathetic for a 30-year-old man, but not as pathetic as being unable to move out of my childhood house despite never liking Florida. I have a lot of bad memories connected to this place, yet I can’t move out. My dead parents keep haunting my dreams, yet I can’t take down their pictures. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself.

My heart dropped when the power went out. I panicked and stubbed my toe on a coffee table.“Duck nugget!” I yelled out in pain.

But the pain was good. The pain made me sit down and think. I knew what to do; I just had to push myself to keep calm.

I turned on the flashlight on my phone and looked around. Somehow, the place looked even worse in the dark. It truly brought out the chaos. It was then, looking at the collection of old, rusty cookware piling in the corner, that I decided to try and get some sleep. Once again, I gave up my comfort for the silence of the noise-canceling headphones. It was not a peaceful sleep; it never was with them, but it was a sleep nevertheless, and I was grateful for it.

I tried to take a step, but the moment I set a foot on the floor, the same foot I stubbed my toe on the night before, I was met with a cold metal sting. “Hang nuts!” I picked the thing up and wanted to throw it, but it had caught my eye. Because I had no idea what the hell the thing was.

‘Is it a sphere? An oval? A worn-out cube?’ I thought to myself. Maybe out loud, I could barely tell the difference anymore. ‘What is it even for?’ The answer was probably nothing. Just some piece of junk Antonia liked to collect. ‘But how did it get there? It wasn’t here last night, was it? Maybe I’m going crazy…’

I put the thing down, carefully, afraid Antonia’s ghost put it there to torment me, and with an unsettling feeling in my stomach, I went upstairs. I wanted to inspect the damage the storm might have caused, but the stop sign in the middle of my living room stopped me in my tracks. “Oh look, that thing really works.”

It took days to get the mess all cleaned up, and at the end of it, I was left with a huge bill from the cleaning company and shattered windows that I couldn’t afford to fix. So instead, I was living with a cardboard wall and sleeping with my handgun under my pillow.

Despite it all, or maybe because of it, a good thing came out of it. I was finally able to start cleaning up all the junk around the house. Not knowing back then how good it was for me.

There was a part of me that was fed up with always stumbling over some piece of crap, hoping there might me something valuable in there for me to pawn. But the other part was still afraid. The little boy inside who got yelled at for touching his father's collection of broken TV remotes. And there I was, juggling them, dropping them, throwing them out, always keeping an eye open.

I had to go through multiple big boxes before I found Antonia’s engagement ring, stashed deep inside her closet. I don’t remember ever seeing her without it, not even when she was cooking. Admittedly, that wasn’t too often. I basically grew up on Lunchables, but still, it was weird that she would take it off, not to mention put it in her closet when she had a safe. “God, if this was in her closet, there must be the devil’s gold in the safe.”

I’ve heard the story of the ring thousands of times. Antonia probably loved that story more than she loved me. Father’s family came from Germany. Or whatever the land was called back then. My great-great-great-grandfather, Ernst, made it himself, with his bare hands, out of gold he illegally dug out and a small diamond and a few sapphires he stole. He had no idea what he was doing, so naturally he ended up with an ugly ring and jail time. But it managed to steal his girlfriend’s heart. After all, it was the intent that counted.

Since then, it has become the family tradition to steal an engagement ring and propose with it. Father got this one, god knows where, and proposed with it to Antonia on their fifth date. She rejected him, of course. He had no car, no place to live, and an average job. She never had any objections about the ring, though. The next time he proposed, he fixed all the problems, and she said yes.

Antonia never let anyone look at it too closely, and now, as I was holding it in my fingers, I finally understood why. The ring was engraved. It wasn’t too visible, and I had to really focus on deciphering what it said. So she was just a little paranoid, but to be fair, I would be too if I were wearing a stolen, expensive-looking ring on my finger.

And she must have taken good care of it because it looked new, which it wasn’t. The engraving said 1949. It was stashed in a velvet-lined box, together with a black-and-white photo. There was a beautiful woman in the picture, wearing that ring and showing it off to the camera. She was smiling. A bright smile, much brighter than the diamond.

There was a date in the photo. June 6th, 1949. And just like the ring, it was in remarkable condition. No creases, no signs of anyone touching it, the color was neat. Very strange for a 76-year-old piece of paper. I turned it around. There was a handwritten note on the back.

‘I’m sorry. I love you and always will. But it wasn’t meant to be. - C.’

I was instantly intrigued. Whatever the story behind these words was, it couldn’t be good. The woman lost whom I assumed to be her fiancé, and then lost the ring he’d given her. Or maybe she sold it, maybe she just threw it away, not being able to hold on to the memory.

The way didn’t matter. I had the ring and was going to sell it. That thing would easily pay for the house repair, and I could splurge a little on myself. Maybe a nice steak dinner. Maybe a new PlayStation. Maybe an investment in stocks. No, definitely not that one.

I was a 30-year-old with no savings, no stable job, and only had a roof over my head because I inherited it. And I wondered why I had so many debt collectors knocking on my door.

I turned the photo again, and the woman’s necklace caught my eye. I hadn’t noticed it before, and I don’t know how, but it was very pronounced—great letters written in calligraphy.

‘Antonia’

It couldn’t be a relative. She didn’t have the huge, crooked nose that I and everyone else in the family had. There was nothing else in the box. Just the ring and the photo. Except for the engraving on the ring.

‘Forever together’

A little cheesy if you ask me, but that woman seemed to love it. There was a weird mark between the two words. It looked like letters linked to each other, but I couldn’t decipher them. Probably the maker’s mark. That was when it hit me. I couldn’t sell a stolen ring, could I? On one hand, it has been 35 years at the very least since it was stolen, and I doubted anyone was even looking for it anymore. And I really needed the money.

On the other hand, Antonia was dead, and so was my father, so if I got caught with the ring, I would get punished for it, and I had enough problems already.

I decided not to decide what to do. Not yet. It was late, and I was tired from going through all the trash all day. So I went to bed as I’d rather have a clear mind before making a choice.

//////////

I woke up with a terrible neck pain. I made the wrong choice; I should have taken father's neck pillow. It was old and full of dust, but it would have been better than rawdogging such a long train ride without it. I’d been stuck in there for over 30 hours. It was times like that, and when the train food didn’t really agree with me, that I regretted not just selling the ring and going on with my life.

Till this day, I don’t know what possessed me to do it. Going to the other side of the US just to give back something I didn’t steal and that, for all I knew, no one was even looking for. But the morning after I found the ring, I looked at the photo and the woman’s eyes… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like she put me under a spell. Like I wasn’t in control of my actions.

After almost two days of traveling, I finally reached Minneapolis. After just aimlessly staring out the train window, looking at the changing scenery, time seemed to fly. I found the jeweler’s in no time. It was a tiny hole in the wall. The entire shop looked like it could fit 8 people at most. Luckily, there was only me and the woman behind the counter.

“Good day, sir. Are you here to buy an engagement ring for your lady? Or maybe resize this one? Family heirloom, I assume. How lovely, my ring is a family heirloom too. Funny story, my father–”

“Listen, lady,” I interrupted her, which earned me an angry frown, “I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve traveled a long way to find this shop and I need answers, so could you please tell me who originally bought this ring?” I put it on the counter, and she took it, looking at it with suspicion.

“There are rules I have to follow, young man. I can’t just tell anyone who comes here private information about our customers.”

“I understand, but–”

“No buts. What are you even going to do with that information anyway? Rob the house of some rich people? I’m not helping you with that.”

“Not rob them. I want to give them the ring back.”

“Give it back? I see, you stole it, and now your conscience won’t let you sleep. That’s it, I’m calling the cops.”

“What? Wait, please!” I panicked as she picked up the phone and started turning the rotary dial. “I hate my life!” I yelled out desperately. “I… keep waiting for something to happen to turn things around for me, and… it’s not coming. So, I’m taking action… I guess that’s selfish of me, because I hope it will help my karma, but… Trust me, I have good intentions too, unlike my parents, who originally stole it. They’re dead now, and I’m nothing like them, I hope… What am I even saying? I just want the ring to go back to its owner. Please, can you help me with it?”

She let out a heavy sigh as she took a good look at me. And at my huge nose, which I found rude, but I didn’t say anything.

“Alright, follow me.” She said, and went through the back door. A loud metal bang sounded from the back of the shop, and when I took a peek, there was a metal dog bowl rolling around the woman. “Damn the old man, how is his crap spread everywhere!” The woman cursed, kicked the bowl to the side, and continued down the shop.

I followed her, hesitantly, looking around to not knock over something else, but then we reached a staircase, and with no more obstacles, I took the stairs by two to catch up to her. Against all my survival instincts, and the pit that formed in my stomach, I entered the apartment, but let the door open, just to feel a little safer.

“Dad?” The woman yelled into the apartment, but not a sound came back. “You’ll need to be patient with him, he’s hard of hearing. Among other things.” We went further into the apartment until we found a very old man sitting in an even older armchair. He was hooked to a bunch of machines. All of them were beeping. And from where I was standing, the man was barely breathing.

The woman pushed me to stand in front of him. His eyes flickered and opened wider than they had in a while.

“Conrad.” He said, reaching his hand toward me.

“No,” I said, confused, “Conrad was my father. How did you…” There was a framed photo on his side table. It was a black-and-white photo of a man who looked exactly like me, holding a small kid who looked exactly like my father.

“You really got the end short of the stick, kid. Parents like that, and you got the family nose… Glad I wasn’t that unlucky.” The woman said calmly, taking a seat while I stood there, confused as never before.

“Who the hell are you?” I yelled out loud, making the old man shift, but then he went to his peaceful state. Meanwhile, I got all the gossip from Amanda, as she introduced herself.

The old man was Conrad senior, my grandfather. And Amanda was his younger child. Neither of them had seen nor heard from father since he proposed to Antonia. Their relationships were always strained. He had behavioral issues since he was a kid, stealing, fighting, being an asshole in general. His proposal was what made them go no contact.

And the woman in the photo? Antonia? That was my grandmother. She hated father since the moment she met him, and she disagreed with their marriage too. But she didn’t choose to never see her daughter again. One day, she was alone. The ring was gone, too, but she wasn’t too troubled by that.

She got that ring from a man who left her and broke her heart. The same man who was sitting in front of me, barely able to move. The man who swore he made it himself, breaking the family tradition. And a few days after he promised her they would spend the rest of their lives together, he was gone, too.

Amanda finished the story, relieved to finally have someone to share that all with. Conrad wasn’t capable of a sensible conversation in years.

“How did they die?” Amanda asked me.

“We were in a car accident… I was driving, and… the truck came out of nowhere.” I couldn’t finish. I’ve never told the story. It was too painful. A silence fell between us. I needed a minute to recover from the memory and all the new information I just learned. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one.

The silence was interrupted by an awful noise coming from the old man. I’ll never forget the sound. And neither will Amanda.

Thankfully, Conrad didn’t suffer for long. He lived a long, full life. Full of regret, that is. He regretted ever proposing to Antonia. He regretted leaving her, the love of his life, for money. He regretted raising his son to be such an awful man. He regretted never trying to mend things between them.

I have a few regrets of my own. I believe everyone does. But one thing I don’t regret is taking initiative, taking that train, and overhauling my life. Because six years after I found the ring, I’m finally happy, living with my family in Minnesota.