Page 170 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

“Ready?”he asked, bounding down the stairs with a big smile. He had a paper bag in his hand and was wearing a floral paisley button-down that looked new.

“Yep. I like your shirt.”

He smoothed his hand down the front. “Thanks. I went shopping.”

When we got into the Jeep, he set the bag in my lap. “Got you something too.”

I peeked inside the bag. It was a mango. “You can feed it to me later.” I set the bag on the floor.

“I will.” He glanced over before pulling onto the main road. “But there’s something else in there too.”

I retrieved the bag and searched inside. My fingers latched onto cool metal and precious gemstones. When I held it up in the pink and tangerine sunlight streaming through the windshield, I started shaking all over.

“Where?” I whispered. “How…?” My voice cracked on a sob.

I didn’t even realize I was crying until I tasted the salty tears on my lips. Then a switch flipped, and my tears quickly turnedinto hysterical laughter. I was crying laughing, my shoulders bucking from the force when Gabriel steered off the road and stopped on the shoulder.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Shit. I’m sorry.” He reached across the center console and pulled me into his arms. “Are you okay?”

I was still laughing maniacally.

Only Gabriel would give me my ruby ring in a paper bag with a mango that he’d casually tossed into my lap.

He held my face in his hands and studied it like he wasn’t sure if I was having a mental breakdown. “I shouldn’t have surprised you like that. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” he said, misinterpreting my emotional response. “That ring brings back bad memories, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to wear it. Who needs a reminder of the bad shit? You know what? Fuck it. We’ll toss it in the ocean?—”

I cut him off. He sounded like he was ready to turn the car around and do it right now. “We’re not tossing it in the ocean,” I protested. “I love this ring so much. You had it made for me.” I slid the ring onto my finger, just to prove how much I loved it and how happy I was to have it back.

The ring was still a perfect fit.

Gabriel let out a sigh of relief and pushed his hand through his shower-damp hair. Those stubborn locks fell over his forehead again. “Fuck. I thought you were upset.”

I shook my head. “Just overwhelmed. In a good way,” I added quickly to ease the concern etched on his face. “I’m never taking it off again. Thank you so much for doing this…” My throat closed up. I was crying again, but they were happy tears.

Gabriel kissed my lips and then he kissed away the tears on my cheeks.

I loved my ring almost as much as I loved him. It had been an emotional evening. First, the notebook and now the ring.

But if I’d needed a sign from the universe, I’d gotten it.

Over dinner on a patio overlooking a rolling green lawn and the lake at sunset, Gabriel told me how he found the ring.

The day after we had dinner at the Cuban Chinese restaurant, he made it his mission to track it down.

With a photo he got from my mom, where you could clearly see the ring on my finger, he made flyers (just my hand, not my face). He visited pawn shops from Brooklyn to Queens to Harlem to Chinatown. He spent two days speaking to the cops at the local precincts and putting out the word to the guys selling stolen goods on the street. He even paid some kids to hang flyers all over the city and offered a reward to anyone who found it.

“Twenty grand?” My jaw dropped. “What the hell, Gabriel?”

“I would have given them fifty. A hundred. Whatever they asked.”

I ate a piece of lobster ravioli right off his plate. To think he’d gone to all this trouble to get my ring back. I just couldn’t get over it. “So who finally found it?”

“This is a great story,” he said. “You’re going to love this. I got the call two days ago. The guy said he had the ring. I didn’t know if hereallyhad the ring or if it was just a hoax, but I arranged to meet him this morning at a coffee shop across the street from my meeting.”

I laughed. “It sounds like a drug deal.”

“Felt like it,” he laughed. “But this kid shows up. Young. Late teens. He told me he was walking through Central Park and found the ring just lying on the grass. So, he went home and asked his dad what he should do with it. His dad said, ‘If your mother or your grandmother lost their engagement ring or something valuable to them, what would you want the person todo if they found it?’ And the kid said that he’d want them to do the right thing. So, he was on his way to turn it in at the nearest police station when he saw one of my flyers and called me.”

“First of all, I love this kid and his dad. But also, oh my god, Gabriel! Your number is all over the city now.”