him. Said, �If they take me, they'll take the ring, too. They'll cut it right from my hand, those bastards.� He drew out on paper some equation that illustrated how his wedding ring would translate to bullets that would eventually kill U.S. Soldiers. Harriet supposed it made sense. Honestly, she didn't really care.
Unlike many of the other military wives, Harriet thought the hardest part of Joe's being at war was in his returning. Whenever he shipped out, she forced herself to think it would be the last time they spoke, and they always made the words romantic. �No regrets,� he would say. �I've always loved you, and I always will.� Stuff she might read in one of her novels Joe would always roll his eyes at. The last time he had come home, Harriet was surprised to find that she was slightly disappointed in his embrace, knowing that now, things were real again. He was Joe, and she was Harriet. No glorified hero, no distraught and lonely widow. Just husband and wife. Still, she was deeply embarrassed at this, and she kept the secret from everyone she knew � including Dr. Kaufman.
Harriet wondered what kind of a person might have left such a beautiful ring behind. And how did it get there in the first place? How had it come loose from its owner's finger? Surely this was no accident. She couldn't help but think it curious that no one had snatched it up yet, considering the rough neighborhood, a microcosm of violence in Edgetown, just miles away from the base in Colorado Springs. On her second trip from the car with another load of clothes, she stopped back at the box and stuck the ring in her pocket. To keep it safe, she thought. Until someone comes looking for it.
Harriet pulled the first article of clothing from her bag � an old cream-colored dress with a pink ribbon across the belly that her mother wore as a child. She wasn't sure why she kept it, but it came in handy now that she had kids of her own. Sarah loved to play
dress up. All day she would prance around in anything but her normal clothes, changing outfits every hour. This dress belonged to lunchtime. A large, red, tomato soup stain dominated the entire front, from top to bottom. The stain, Harriet knew, was hopeless, but she tried anyway. After all, it was her profession to remove the dirty stains from her family's life. She doused the dress in stain-remover and tossed it into the washer.
Sarah dressed up because she liked to pretend, thought Harriet, and that was it. She dressed up because she could, and that was it too. Harriet would dress up, but only when Sarah wasn't watching. She would don the clothes of a chain smoker, of a worried wife and an uncertain mother, someone who didn't have it all together. Harriet dressed up when Joe came home; she would make herself pretty for him. She painted her face and her lips. And she dressed up when they were alone. When supper wasn't ready once, she explained that she wasn't herself that day, and that she would be someone else tomorrow. Sarah wore makeup because at that moment it was right to be a woman. When it was no longer convenient or fun, she became something else, like a lion (a Halloween costume that Harriet had made for her on her first year of Trick-or-Treating).
Did the mystery-man have a daughter? she thought. If he left his wife, which he was obviously willing to do since he had already left the ring, would she stay to care for the little girl? Or perhaps he didn't even have children. Not because he couldn't, but because he didn't want to. He was probably the type of man who didn't want anything tying him down in one place. He needed to be free.
Harriet glanced at the door. She realized that she hadn't been