The Mystery of the Wedding Ring

When Joe Glackin and his fiancée Lily were planning their wedding they wanted their rings to be special. They ordered them in Samuels Jewellers and were delighted with their choice. The rings came together in a box, both of them with the same registration number engraved inside. They were distinctive in that they were a particular colour of gold and barrel shaped, an unusual choice for that time.

When Joe died very suddenly in his early thirties, Lily sadly placed his ring back in the box and kept it on her bedside table. Within a year her mother died and she put her mother’s wedding ring in the same box.

Some time later her sister came home from Shropshire to visit Lily but while she was in Derry her wedding ring nipped and they brought it to Samuels to have it mended. Unfortunately it was not ready before her departure so Lily told her that she could take which ever one from the box, which she did. When she showed it to Lily it was Joe’s ring. Her sister chose the narrower ring thinking that it was her mother’s and Lily hadn’t the heart to tell her. She touched it on her sister’s hand before she left to go back to England.

A week later Lily’s younger daughter came downstairs and told her mother that she had found a wedding ring. Lily was busy and didn’t look, thinking that it might be a curtain ring or the like. Later her elder daughter Bernadette came in and lifted the ring from the mantelpiece. She brought it to Lily and was shocked when she saw that her mother was wearing her own ring. Lily examined it, unsettled by the fact that it looked exactly like her late husband’s ring which she knew to be with her sister in England. A neighbour, who had known the circumstances of the ring was visiting at the same time When her brother came in she told him and immediately he took the two ring to Samuels where they had been bought. They verified that they were a set by the numbers.

Lily decided to phone her sister in England but before she could ask about the ring her sister became quite upset apologizing about the loss of the wedding ring. It was a little too big for her hand she explained, so her son, believing it to be his grandmother’s ring, put it on a gold chain around his neck. That night he was attacked coming home and the chain was ripped from him. He spent a long time looking for it and the next day his mother came back with him and helped him to look but the ring could not be found.

When Lily told her that she had the ring and that it had appeared in her house out of the blue she couldn’t believe it. Lily assured her that it was the ring that she had given to her. She then suggested that her sister talk to the neighbour who had been with her that day. The neighbour confirmed the story.