I frowned.
He continued.
“For one second, I thought maybe you wouldn’t even want it anymore. It came from another marriage. Another life.”
Then he looked at the girls.
“But Emily told me something.”
Emily looked embarrassed.
“What did she say?”
Mike smiled slightly.
“She said, ‘It belonged to our family before you were here. That doesn’t mean you’re not our family now.’”
My eyes immediately filled with tears.
Lily opened the cabinet and pulled out a small handmade wooden box.
“We were cleaning the ring every day.”
Emily laughed.
“Very badly at first.”
“That’s why we kept locking ourselves in here,” Mike said.
Lily handed me the box.
On top, written in uneven letters, were the words:
ALL OF OUR FAMILY STORIES MATTER.
I looked at Mike.
“You told them not to tell me.”
He nodded.
“We wanted to surprise you.”
“And the secret?”
“Mother’s Day.”
I sat down on the bathroom floor.
For days, I had been watching every movement, every whisper, every locked door, convinced there was something I was not seeing.
