The Ring in the Flour Tin

Two hours before Sunday's family lunch, Talia's grandmother realises her wedding ring is missing. It always sits in a small dish by the bathroom sink, every single night. The house fills with quiet panic. Drawers are opened. Coat pockets are checked twice.

Talia's first thought goes straight to her cousin Ezra. He arrived from out of town the night before, and everyone jokes that he has a habit of borrowing things without asking. She doesn't say this out loud, but she watches him more closely than usual while he sets the table. She half expects to catch him looking guilty.

By the time the guests start arriving, the ring still hasn't turned up. Talia's grandmother is trying, not very successfully, to pretend it doesn't matter. "It's probably somewhere obvious," she says, in the voice adults use when they don't quite believe their own words. Talia notices her hands are shaking slightly as she stirs the gravy.

It's Talia who finally finds it, almost by accident, while helping measure flour for the biscuits her grandmother makes every week. Something small and hard clinks against the metal scoop at the bottom of the flour tin. She lifts it out and brushes off the white powder. She holds up the ring, hardly believing what she's looking at.

Her grandmother laughs so suddenly that she has to sit down. She explains that she always takes the ring off before baking, so the dough doesn't stick to it. She must have dropped it into the tin instead of the usual dish without noticing, distracted by the phone ringing at exactly the wrong moment.

Talia thinks about how close she came to saying something unfair to Ezra. He had done nothing wrong at all, except arrive on the same day as a very ordinary accident. If she had said anything to him earlier, the whole afternoon would have felt very different for both of them. When he walks past a few minutes later, she bumps his shoulder with hers. She doesn't explain why, just glad she never said anything out loud.