In the Flower Bed

“I can’t believe she found it!” Mary shouted into the phone as soon as Elsie picked up. She was sitting on a plaid couch with a phone table next to it. The receiver attached to her rotary dial phone was in clenched tightly in her left hand.

“Can’t believe who found what?” Elsie stammered. She had been in her kitchen making an apple pie when the phone started ringing. She was still a little flustered and wiping water from her hands off the receiver while she listened to Mary’s excited voice blare through the phone.

“Kelsey found it! You know I lost it about 35 years ago and looked everywhere for it. Charlie was so mad that I lost it. You know, he never liked wasting money and since I lost it, he thought it was a waste. He paid so much money for that. Lord, I never heard the end of losing it. If he was alive today he’d be jumping for joy that it turned up. I still can’t believe she found it! And of all the places…”

Elsie saw an opportunity to jump in. She hadn’t been able to say anything at all. Mary was talking like all her sentences were one big sentence and she didn’t want to interrupt. She hadn’t seen Mary this excited in years.

“Where did she find it?” Elsie interrupted as she pulled out a chair and sat down. She didn’t want to mention that Mary still hadn’t told her what it was. She assumed she’d figure it out from talking to her eventually.

“It was out in the flower bed,” Mary replied eagerly. “I keep thinking back to when I lost it.” she continued.

“I don’t remember even being out there that day.” she openly pondered.

Elsie put her elbow up on her dining table and let her chin rest on her hand. She thought hard about what Mary could have lost out in the flower bed over 30 years ago. The two of them had been friends since grade school. They had lived on the same street and frequented the same places for over 50 years. She knew she could figure out what valuable possession Mary lost all those years ago. She thought it over as Mary blabbered on.

“I didn’t tell Charlie for days. Well, I guess I didn’t really tell him at all. A few days after I had lost it, he noticed and asked me about it. I wanted to lie but I knew that I couldn’t. I knew he would be able to see it on my face.” Mary’s words faded off as she touched her palm to her cheek.

She cleared her throat and went on talking “I was so hurt that I had lost it and the fact that I had to tell him about it made the emotional pain nearly unbearable. He probably didn’t even have to ask me. I know he could already tell that something was wrong. I even tried to dodge the question. I could tell he was getting fed up with it because he sat down in that leather high back chair in the den. He wouldn’t even look at me because he knew I was lying by omission.”

What did she lose that he would get so upset about? Elsie thought to herself.

Mary kept going, “Anyway, I went on making breakfast and poured his coffee. He went to work. I didn’t give a straight answer until that evening. I waited until right before bed, after his nightly whiskey. He’s the most relaxed then. That’s when I went up to him and said, “remember what you asked me about this morning? I remember him groaning yes at me. That’s when I told him that I lost it.”

“Lost what?” Elsie finally asked.

Mary was mid-story and didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, Elsie! His face got as red as the side of the barn. He crumpled up the newspaper into a ball in one hand. I braced myself for the yelling and the lecture about taking care of our things but it never came. He was so angry that he just walked away. I had never seen him do that. He had yelled, screamed, and even got violent but he had never just walked away. I felt so guilty. I knew how much it meant to him and I thought I should have been more careful. It took me years to understand that it wasn’t my fault and accidents like that happen.”

“Did he ever say anything else about it?” Elsie asked curiously, suddenly drawn into the story and unbothered by not knowing what it was.

“Now that you mentioned it, no. Not one single word.” Mary said with a sigh. “I bet he was still upset over it when he died.” she joked to lighten the load of talking about her dead husband.

Elsie was shocked. “He didn’t say a thing?!” She exclaimed.

“No!” Mary said with disbelief.

“I guess I didn’t notice back then because I was too busy looking for it. I searched high and low. I ran through every scenario in my head too. I was trying with all my might to figure out what happened to it. I checked the basement, the cellar, the washer, all the furniture cushions, every clothes pocket, and each drawer. I started thinking one of the kids might have eaten it. I even called a plumber to check the drains and pipes. I don’t think I ever checked the flower bed though.” she elaborated.

Elsie was still thinking about what it could be when Mary started to tell her the part about Kelsey finding it and she hoped that she would finally get to hear what it was that Kelsey found.

“All these years it was right under the front window in that flower bed! This morning when I headed outside to water the flowers Kelsey was insistent about going out there with me. You know, she’s only 18 months old and I just didn’t think her being in the front yard that close to the road was a good idea. Sometimes I get lost in my gardening and I didn’t want something bad to happen but she was throwing an absolute fit. I decided I’d just sit her in the flower bed next to me and see if I could get her to dig. Boy, am I glad I did that!” Mary exclaimed.

“So she dug it right up?” questioned Elsie

“Yea. She dug it right out of the ground. She was scratching her little hands in the dirt, real shallow too, probably no more than an inch down, and she lifted her hand to my face, and right there it was.”

Refusing to believe Mary had gotten through the whole story without telling her what it was, Elsie kept it going and said, “and that was it? Just like that?”

“Just like that!” Mary confirmed. “Kelsey found the engagement ring that Charliegave me right out there under the marigolds.”