I keep it not because I miss what it stood for, but because I never want to forget how easily I was fooled, how much I mistook, how long I called my own diminishment by the name of love.

There is a value in keeping the artifacts of your worst errors close, where you can see them, so that the lesson does not fade.

The ring reminds me: you gave everything, and it was not enough, and it was never going to be enough, because they did not want you, they wanted what you provided.

Never again.

That is what the ring says to me now, from its high shelf, every time my eye happens to land on the box.

It is the most useful thing the Vances ever gave me, that ring, because it turned out to be a lesson I could keep.