Engagement Ring

by Niles Reddick

After I asked my girlfriend to marry me, and she said yes, I needed to get a ring. I didn’t have the funds to purchase one without plunging into debt, and like my dad who collected used pizza pans to give away for wedding gifts, my aunt who recycled roadkill into art, and my grandmother who reused paper plates, cups, and tin foil, I had been conditioned to be frugal, look for deals, and scan trash piles for treasures. 

I wondered if my aunts who’d had multiple marriages had kept their engagement rings. I called them, asked to borrow them, and they all said, “Hope it’ll bring you more luck than it did me.” I told them I’d give them some money once my girlfriend made a choice. 

I unzipped the freezer bag and spread the treasures on the kitchen table. My girlfriend smiled, told me she appreciated my creativity, but she wanted her own ring, not a ring from one of my aunts’ failed marriages. I understood her logic, appreciated her recognition of my frugality, and after taking out a high interest loan, I bought her a small quarter carat diamond set in yellow gold. 

I did not, however, tell her the flowers I wooed her with for months before our engagement had been ones I plucked from fresh arrangements placed on new graves in the cemetery. I knew the carnations, roses, and lilies would bring her more joy than the recently planted.

Niles Reddick is author of a novel Drifting too far from the Shore, two collections Reading the Coffee Grounds and Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in over 500 publications including The Saturday Evening Post, PIF, New Reader Magazine, Forth Magazine, Citron Review, Right Hand Pointing, Nunum, and Vestal Review. His newest collection If Not for You was just released by Big Table Publishing in Boston/San Francisco, and He is a four-time Pushcart, two-time Best Micro, two-time Best of the Net, two-time Vera, and a Best Small Fiction nominee. Follow him on Twitter, @niles_reddick, or on Instagram, @nilesreddickmemphisedu.