He didn’t answer me directly with words. Instead, he pulled a crisp gloss photograph out of the thick brown envelope and slid it carefully through the small narrow gap in the door.
I almost refused to take it from his fingers out of sheer suspicion. But then my eye caught the brilliant shimmer of the gold ring on the woman’s hand.
A smiling middle-aged woman stood beside a young teenage girl, her arm wrapped lovingly around the girl’s thin shoulders. On her left hand was the exact same enormous diamond ring that Harper had retrieved at Target just yesterday afternoon.
I pulled the photo closer to my face to examine the teenage girl. The gentle smile, the dark wavy hair, and those deep familiar eyes hit me all at once. My hands went ice cold in an instant.
It was Paige, my late daughter-in-law and Harper’s mother. I had known Paige since she was twenty years old, but I had never seen a single picture of her as a teenager.
