“Wait,” Tess said.
Mara had one arm out of the cardigan. She stopped.
Tess took the empty sleeve and opened the cuff. She put two fingers inside the fold, then shook it once. Nothing touched her hand.
“What is it?” Mara asked.
“The other one.”
Mara pulled her arm out and passed it over. Tess checked that cuff too, though she knew which sleeve she'd used. She shook the cardigan over the hall chair. A tiny piece of flour fell onto the seat.
“Tess?”
She took the tote and held it open. Her keys, scissors, little packets of ribbon, a crumpled shop receipt. She put the cardigan down and felt across the bottom of the bag.
Ben came to the doorway with the plates.
“What's missing?”
Tess looked at Mara's bare left hand.
“Your ring.”
Mara glanced down too. “What?”
“I had it. I put it in the cuff. Before I came here.”
She lifted the sleeve again. It was impossible that this soft bit of wool could simply be empty. She had put the ring there herself. She pushed her thumb into the fold until the fabric stretched.
“You had my ring?” Mara asked.
“I borrowed it.”
The word sounded wrong before she finished saying it.
“I took it,” she said. “When you were cooking. From the cup.”
Ben put the plates down in the kitchen. He returned empty-handed.
“Why?”
Tess kept looking at Mara. She wished Ben would leave them alone, and knew she had no right to ask.
“I wore it to see Cal.”
Mara didn't move.
“I wanted him to think I was engaged. I said I was. Then I told him the truth. About all of it.”
“You wore my ring?”
“Yes.”
“Without asking me.”
Tess nodded. Her throat felt too tight for another yes.
“I took it off at the café. I put it here, in the turned cuff. I folded the cardigan into my bag. I was going to put it straight back when I got here, but the dish—”
She stopped. The dish wasn't responsible for anything she'd done at the café.
“When you put my cardigan on,” she asked Mara, “did anything fall out?”
“No.”
“A little clink? On the hall floor, maybe?”
“No. Nothing fell out.”
Tess turned toward the chair. She got down on her knees and ran her hand along the edge of the seat. The chair had no cushion, no place where it could have gone. She looked underneath it.
Ben crouched beside her.
“Stand up. I'll move it.”
She stood. He lifted the chair, carried it into the kitchen and came back. Tess stared at the exposed square of floor as though it had disappointed her deliberately.
Nothing was there except dust and one green thread.
Mara picked up the cardigan. Her hand held the cuff where Tess had stretched it.
“Were you going to tell me?”
Tess shook her head.
“No. I was going to put it back.”
Mara pressed her lips together. The silence lasted long enough for Tess to hear Ben move behind her.
“We need to look,” he said. “Before anything gets moved around.”
He pulled the kitchen chairs away from the table. Tess put every item from her bag on the hall floor, checked inside the ribbon packets and turned the lining out. A paperclip caught in one of the loose folds. She flicked it aside. The ring didn't fall out with it.
She shook the bag again. Then she put it flat on the chair and searched between the lining and the canvas as far as her fingers would go.
“Have you found it?” Ben asked from the kitchen.
“No,” Tess said.
He looked past her at Mara.
“Mara?”
“No.”
Mara was kneeling near the bathroom door, running a hand over the floor. She stood, checked the towel she had taken off the hook and hung it back.
Tess searched under the hall mat. She knew there was no reason it should be there. She lifted it anyway.
They went through the flat once, properly. Ben moved the sofa enough for Tess to see beneath it. Mara looked among the shoes by the door and behind the bathroom bin. Tess checked the cardigan over the kitchen table, inside out, every fold opened, every sleeve shaken. She went over the bag again.
On the table lay all the things she had brought to help: ribbon, scissors, a pencil, tiny cards. The empty blue eggcup was above them.
Ben stood still at last.
“Are you sure it got here?”
Tess opened her mouth to say yes. She had been so certain it was safe in that cuff.
“I don't know,” she said.
“You put it there at the café.”
“Yes.”
“Then you came straight here?”
She shook her head. “We walked.”
“Where?”
“Along the river. To the second bridge. Then there's a bench farther on.”
Ben closed his eyes briefly.
“I'll go back,” Tess said. “Right now.”
“It's getting dark.”
“Then in the morning. I'll go when they open.”
He took his phone out and searched for the café number. Tess stood beside him as he called. She wanted the person who answered to interrupt him with Yes, a green stone, we've got it. Instead he described the ring, waited, said thank you and put the phone down.
“They haven't seen one. They'll look when they clear the tables.”
Mara sat on the kitchen chair. She didn't cry. Tess would have known what to do if she had cried, or she would at least have been able to try putting her arms around her. Mara looked at the empty eggcup and rubbed the place where her ring had been.
“I'm sorry,” Tess said.
Mara nodded without looking up.
“I thought it would just be a little while.”
“I was here,” Mara said. “You could have asked me.”
“I know.”
“And I would have said no.”
“I know that too.”
Ben put the phone on the table with a harder movement than he needed. “Did Cal know whose it was?”
“After I told him.”
“Did he see you put it in the cuff?”
“Yes.”
“Ask him whether he saw it fall. On the walk.”
Tess took out her phone. Cal had already sent a message.
I'm glad you came.
She couldn't answer that. Not with Mara's hand bare beside the empty plate.
She called him instead. When he answered, her voice broke on the first word, and she had to start again.
He hadn't seen the ring fall. He asked whether she wanted him to come over. Tess looked at Ben's face.
“No,” she said. “Not now.”
After she hung up, Ben wrote the café opening time on the back of one of the spare cards.
“I'll meet you outside at nine.”
Tess nodded. She began packing the bag again, more slowly this time. When she reached the cardigan she held it for a moment, then folded it with both cuffs open.
“Leave the cards,” Mara said.
Tess looked at her.
“I'll do them,” Mara said. “Not tonight. Tomorrow.”
Tess put the packet back on the table.