Ring of Truth (29 page)

Against her hip she felt the bulge in her pocket and remembered the mystery box. She drew it out and looked at it closely for the first time.

The box had the look of something passed from hand to hand over a long time. She ran her fingers over the places where the burgundy leather was thin and scratched, exposing a soft dull brown under layer, like the toes of old shoes. A fleeting image of the sort of box she imagined Daniel giving his fiancée later in the weekend passed through her mind, black velvet with a Graff diamond the size of a fava bean.

When she flipped open the lid, she found a different ring from the engagement ring she'd been imagining. Nestled in a groove of the red silk lining was an old gold band made of two hands clasping a heart-shaped emerald wearing a little crown. She put the box down and removed the ring from its groove. In her palm it felt warm and alive. Immediately a familiar surge of longing for things long lost spiked in her. She felt as if she'd been hooked up to one of those hospital machines designed to record erratic heart rhythms, its needle swinging wildly up and down.

For a moment, with the ring in her palm, it was a September day, and she was eleven lying with her back against her shaggy black Bernese Mountain dog Sherlock, her bare legs stretched out on the warm boards of the porch of their Oakland hills house. She could smell her mother's oil paints, hear her father's endless rock music playing from his office, taste her grandmother's Sunday morning soda bread, and nothing would ever change. Her throat tightened. That had been the last day her father had been home with them.

She swallowed down the lump in her throat. Whoever had once owned the ring had lost things, she was sure. She lifted it up as if staring at it eye to ring would explain why it had the power to evoke such memories.

At eye level, the light caught an inscription on the inside. She turned the ring to read it.
Know Thy Heart.
The stranger's smile came back to her. Perhaps knowing her heart had given the woman that particular aura of happiness. Tara, however, was pretty sure she knew her heart, her unattached heart, and she couldn't claim to be floating on air. The woman's instructions came back to her.
Read everything. Trust me.

She put the ring down and picked up the box again. Tucked against the red silk lining inside the box's lid was a small, folded square of yellowing paper. Tara unfolded the paper and read the message penned in a spidery script.

Be brave!—for the ring of truth will test you. Once on your finger, its power to speak endures but seven days. Listen and learn, lest you lose its wisdom and your heart's desire. When seven days pass, prepare to give the Claddagh as a gift. Once her face you see, you'll know the one who must the ring receive. On her bestow the ring of truth.

Tara looked from the paper to the ring. Its emerald stone seemed to glow, but the whole thing had to be a hoax. Though the paper looked authentic enough, and the script had the long, slanted letters of old documents like the
Declaration of Independence
, the idea of passing the ring along reminded her of the chain email letters that her college friend, Melissa, sent around, each promising extravagant life changes within the hour if she would just forward to five friends
Now!

She refolded the message, returned it to its box, and picked up the ring again. So she was supposed to listen to it? She held it in her open palm again, waiting for it to speak, wondering whether it would sound like Johnny Depp or Morgan Freeman.
Please not Scarlett Johansson
.

Nothing. The ring sat in her palm without saying a word. No more memories came. A wise woman poet said there was an art to losing things and that it took practice, but Tara felt she had practiced enough. She glanced at the clock. She must have spaced out.

It's a ring, stupid, put it on.

Really, like wearing it would make a difference!

Tara's life did not need changing—perfect job, perfect boyfriend—and the ring was just a piece of metal and stone in spite of the greeting card sentiments attached.

What was she going to learn from a ring?

What harm could it do to test the thing?

She slipped it on her left hand ring finger, where she'd once imagined a very different ring would be. Oddly, it fit, and it looked surprisingly right on her hand. Tara stretched out her arm to admire the thing. Though it was nothing like the diamond she had imagined, the emerald stone seemed to glow again with a white inner light, and a voice that sounded suspiciously like Eddie's echoed in her head.
I know the man for you.

She had plainly lost her mind.

The staff room door opened and Hadley poked her head in. “Tara, hello, time to work, you know.”

“Oh, coming. I just...” She looked like a crazy person hugging her bag, with her hand stretched out over its contents littering the conference table.

Hadley's gaze zeroed in on the ring. “Ooh, is that a ring? I mean a
ring
? Did your guy Justin Whatsits finally propose? When was he in town?”

“Wright. His name is Justin Wright.”

Hadley crossed the room and seized Tara's hand in both of hers. “Let me see. Oh, it's a Claddagh, how romantic? He's Irish, then, is he?”

Irish. The ring was Irish?
Tara nodded. She couldn't say why. She wasn't ready to take the ring off her finger after it had just spoken to her,
if it had spoken
. She couldn't be sure, but she couldn't explain it to Hadley either. Better to let fictional Justin Wright save the day one more time. It came to her in a flash that she could wear the ring for the weekend, while Daniel courted his glamorous heiress. Her friends would not pity her. She wouldn't look like a loser. Then she would break up with her fictional fiancé. It would be the perfect ending to their story, and it would fit the rules of the ring. No reason she couldn't pass the thing on a few days early. She glanced at it again. It looked different in some way, dulled, less vibrant, but that didn't matter. She'd found a way to deal with Daniel's engagement party happening under her nose.

Tara found herself needed as soon as she reached the concierge desk, a beautiful five-drawer mahogany Chippendale piece out of an English country house. Mrs. Alfred P. Woodford pushed her wheelchair bound husband across the lobby with energetic determination and a militant gleam in her eye that did not suggest satisfaction with the Belmont.

“Where's our driver, Ms. Keegan? We expected him at eight.” The clock in the lobby began to strike the hour as she spoke, and a uniformed young man came striding in the front door.

“Ah,” said her husband. “I believe Thomas is here.”

“Yes, but, we should be pulling away from the curb already. Now we have to get you settled and wrestle with your chair and explain where we're going when we could have been underway.”

“Of course, dear, but you'll manage. You always do.” His eyes twinkled at Tara. For their anniversary each year the Woodfords made a pilgrimage to
Notre Dame des Victoires,
the French national church a few blocks away on Bush Street, where they had been married. In the past two years, with Alfred in a wheelchair, all the anxious fretful elements of Mrs. Woodford's nature had intensified. She would not be cheated out of her chance to complain.

“Yes, but, you know how traffic in the city makes it impossible to get anywhere on time.”

“The church will still be there.”

“Let me help, Mrs. Woodford.” Tara took over with Alfred's chair, while Thomas got the door. “Shall I call Father Pierre for you? Then he could meet you at the curb.” With a little more fretting, a call to the church, and a great deal of patience from Thomas they were underway.

After the Woodfords left, Tara managed to get a much-coveted reservation for two foodie guests at the restaurant
Frances
, signed a younger guest up for the Uber phone app taxi service, and booked a spa day for a pair of sisters. It was just what she loved most about her job. When she handed a wine country tour packet to a visiting couple from Rhode Island, the green ring flashed on her finger. She smiled. She could deal with Daniel's proposal plans.

***

By any measure Jack Reeder could call himself a success even in San Francisco with its changing mix of fabled old fortunes and fabulous new ones. The medical practice he and his fellow physician Anne Campion had established in downtown San Francisco was thriving. The way they combined different kinds of expertise with new technologies for patient care felt right for a city of innovators and decidedly old-fashioned traditionalists. He could bike to work from his house in lower Pac Heights. He had a dog, lots of friends, male and female, and if he didn't have a CEO-sized yacht, he had a kayak to glide smoothly over the bay's waters or anchor in McCovey Cove to catch a splash home run from a Giants' game. Not bad for a farm boy from Eastern Washington who had made his way through school on student loans and odd jobs.

This morning Anne had reminded him that his success required him to give back a little to the city. He sat at his desk, staring at the email she had forwarded to him from one of her former sorority sisters. The Charity Chicks and Benefit Babes Fundraiser was looking for bachelors to compete in a Mr. Single San Francisco contest. The money would go to the city's homeless shelters, and the publicity would boost Anne and Jack's medical practice. So he shouldn't hesitate. They had already written up a bio on him.

Who can resist a doctor with blue eyes and healing hands? Dr. Jack Reeder will win your vote and steal your heart. Trained as an ER doctor, a veteran of medical missions in Latin America, Jack studied at Washington State and did his residency here in the city, where he has his own medical practice, Whole Person Health. This hunky MD bikes to work, so he's as easy on the environment as he is on the eyes. No girlfriend—that we know of.

The write-up was technically true, except maybe the part about the healing hands. He had a curious brain and lots of good training from great physician teachers. He liked to listen to his patients, and he was willing to test more than one theory before he jumped to any diagnosis or prescribed a course of treatment. And he did like to
do
medicine, to see results, rather than simply refer his patients to specialists. That's what the ER had been all about, doing medicine on the spot, acting directly for the patient's benefit. And that was the thrill of a medical mission.

“Why are you balking at this contest?” Anne had asked him the day before. “I'm curious. I never see you hesitate.”

He'd put her off, but the answer was simple. The write-up made him feel like a fraud. While most of his patients were pleased with his work, the words of one dissatisfied patient from his ER days stayed with him. More than anything he had wanted to fix that patient, so the man's words stuck, outweighing all the good comments on Internet rating sites since.

As that one homeless man had put it, jabbing Jack in the chest with a bony finger, “You may be smart, boy, but you try to fix people. You can't fix people like you fix cars. Fixing is not healing. To heal a person you've got to be in a relationship with the person. If you just see the disease or the broken body parts, you won't heal anyone. You heal by working with a whole person.”

At the time, he had rejected the advice. He didn't appreciate anyone questioning his new skills, especially not someone whose lifestyle had landed him in the ER with a smashed nose and a concussion. Jack had been living in a small apartment with a crushing amount of student loans, but he had a degree and self-discipline and big plans. What did some homeless guy know anyway?

But the words had stuck. And when he heard the ideas of the homeless man echoed in the conversation of one of his more outspoken colleagues, he found himself thinking about whether he could practice medicine a bit differently from the way he had imagined doing it.

When he was ready to go out on his own, he'd sought out the fellow student who had been so outspoken in her views about what it meant to treat people. They'd hammered out a partnership, raised the start-up money, and begun their Whole Person Health practice, which they had located where even the homeless could find them. He owed Anne a favor, or two, or a hundred, so he should say yes to this request.

He deleted “healing hands” from the blurb, chose a picture of himself from the Whole Person Health website, and sent off an acceptance email to the Charity Chicks.

Since he and Anne had started Whole Person Health, he'd been working on a relationship with his former critic. He knew he'd feel better about competing in the Mr. Single San Francisco contest, if he could get his favorite homeless vet to agree to get a flu shot before the flu season cranked into high gear. He logged off his computer and headed for the nearest food truck. With any luck he'd find his cranky critic today.

***

Just after noon, Tara found a moment to call Daniel. His executive assistant put her through to him, and she immediately offered her congratulations.

“Cut to the chase, Keegan. Is the hotel up to the job?”

“We are so on it. Does Nicola have a favorite flower? Peony, lilac, tuberose?”

“Red roses will work.”

“So is red her favorite color?” Tara did not remember a photograph of Nicola Solari in red.

“Every woman likes red roses.”

“Her favorite fragrance?”

“Expensive.”

“Great, Daniel. You've been most helpful. Any other requests to make your stay more comfortable?”

“Buckwheat pillows.”

“Does Nicola sleep with one?”

“I do.”

“Okay. I'll look into it for you.” Tara made a note.

“And I'd like an appointment at Goorin Bros. I need a new hat.”

“Do you need an appointment with them?” The flagship store of the famous hat makers was just blocks from the Belmont.

“Timing matters. I hope you're up to this, Keegan. This has got to be perfect.”

For whom?
The question popped into her head from nowhere, and she couldn't help pushing back a little. “Daniel, if you have any doubts, why this hotel?”

“The view of Coit Tower.”

Daniel was right that the hotel had a perfect view of the iconic white tower at the top of Telegraph Hill overlooking the whole sweep of the bay.

“But does it make sense to host your engagement bash where an ex-girlfriend works? I can call one of our competitors if it seems awkward.”

“Awkward?”

“For Nicola, because it's her moment.”

“Oh. That's no problem. I never mentioned you to Nicola. You'll just be part of the staff and if the staff does their job right, Nicola will never notice them.”

Ouch!
“Okay, well then, thanks for the information about her preferences. If you think of anything else, please call. We'll do our best to make your weekend perfect.”

Tara hung up and took a deep breath. Daniel's self-important, finger-snapping, bottom-line attitude had pushed her buttons. She had slipped as a concierge. Arturo wouldn't like her recommending a competitor to a client, especially not a client with important connections. She resolved to stay professional in her dealings with Daniel. Her ego might be in the ICU, but she'd survive. She'd make sure that Daniel and Nicola had their perfect weekend, even if Daniel's idea of perfect seemed to be about satisfying himself rather than his fiancée-to-be.

Daniel had obviously survived their break up, so maybe she could learn from him about cutting her losses. Maybe it was better to hit delete when the cursor hovered over files of early bad romances and move on, but didn't people open up to each other about their pasts, about their mistakes and their growth and the things that had happened to make them who they were? Something to think about after her break up with Justin to whom she was now engaged.

The thought made her glance at the ring on her finger, and she held up her hand to look at it again.
Hello, ring, I'm listening. Do you have anything to say?

Predictably, the gold and green band was silent.

***

Jack found Eddie on a bench between the water's edge and the Ferry Building. He didn't try to fix Eddie any more. He just tried to keep the contact going, so he sat on the bench, prepared to shoot the breeze about the Warriors' prospects for the season or the economy, always Eddie's favorite topic. The fog had burned off, but the day was brisk, and the wind off the bay, sharp. Eddie had his hands wrapped around a tall, lidded paper cup. He looked warm enough in a worn, knee-length, navy wool jacket, and mostly he looked sober.

Jack didn't know when Eddie had decided get sober, some time after their disastrous experiment in living together. Living together seemed to bring out the worst in each of them. Jack kept trying to help. Eddie kept insisting that Jack's medical degree was worthless, that he knew nothing about helping a vet in Eddie's circumstances. The whole experiment exploded when Eddie tore the apartment apart in a drunken rage in front of Jack's then girlfriend Lisa. Both Lisa and Eddie had walked out on him, and he didn't see Eddie for more than a year, until he turned up in the ER that night beaten by a couple of thugs.

Jack had done a lot of work since then trying to understand guys like Eddie and trying to resist the impulse to “fix” the broken. Eddie had been right that
fixing
was not
healing
, but knowing Eddie was right did not make it easy to see him resisting services that could get him off the streets. The coldest, wettest days of San Francisco's brief winter lay ahead of them.

Jack unwrapped his turkey sandwich. He knew better than to offer any to Eddie. Pigeons strutted about at their feet, and a gull landed on the railing to watch Jack consume his sandwich. While Jack ate and Eddie sipped his hot beverage, they covered the usual concerns of local sports' fans, the Niners' playoff prospects, the Warriors' coaching woes, and the lead-up to spring training for the Giants. Then Eddie surprised him.

“You dating anyone these days?”

“No.” Jack felt his old wariness immediately surface, and worked to quell it. He and Eddie had very different ideas about women. “Why?”

“I think it's time for you to meet this girl I know. I think you'd like her.”

That was a new one. Jack tried to picture the sort of girl Eddie would pick for him. She would be someone Eddie had met in a recovering addicts' meeting or a veterans' group. Jack pictured tattoos and piercings. Or maybe she'd be a twenty-something barista, with whom Eddie had struck up a flirtation. He pictured tattoos and piercings. The old Eddie, before Iraq and alcoholism, had been a high school hero, Jack's hero, a popular football player who made diving catches and dazzling runs.

“Tell me about her.”

“Tara's an Irish girl, descended from Irish people at any rate. She has that look—a smooth roses-and-cream complexion, hair like burnt caramel, big blue eyes.”

“Figure?” Women in San Francisco tended to be model thin or athletically buff.

“She has a figure. You'll notice right away.”

“So she's hot, but for some reason, she's available?” He tossed his sandwich wrapper in the trash, and the gull took flight.

“She's got this absentee boyfriend, Justin Wright, sort of like an absentee landlord. He neglects her, puts his work ahead of everything. She needs someone steady, reliable, like you.”

“Did you just call me ‘dull,' because I think you did?”

“You know what I mean. You're a regular guy. You're not one of these high-flying tech types. You've got a dog. Watson hasn't left you, right?”

“Now you're suggesting that I'd be good for this girl because Watson likes me. I feed Watson. What if she's romantic?”

“Oh, she's romantic. She just doesn't know it.”

Jack realized that Eddie knew a lot about the girl, more than he imagined him knowing about most of the people he encountered in his life. Eddie, who was Mr. Self-Reliant, who would have found Walden Pond crowded, sounded almost fatherly toward this Tara.