It’s 8.45pm.

Today’s Thursday, which is always a busy night at Biblio. So the earliest I should expect my parents back is 11pm. That gives me plenty of time.

Walking quietly up the stairs so that my friends in the living room don’t realize where I’m going, I try to picture the last time I rummaged through mom’s jewelry box. I would have been a kid back then, maybe five or six years old.

I clearly remember one sunny afternoon in Fall, left at home with gran while mom and dad were at the restaurant. While gran was in the kitchen making our lunch, I crept upstairs to my parent’s bedroom. I went for mom’s makeup drawer first, smearing first my lips, then my eyelids, with her pale silver eye shadow. Then I took the talcum powder from her dresser and sprinkled it all over my head, watching the snowy clouds of talc floating behind me in the mirror. I think I was trying to turn my hair whiter, which was pretty ridiculous, because it was already a very pale blonde. The finishing touch was a pearl necklace from my mom’s jewelry box, which I wrapped around my head like a diadem.

Pleased with my work, I ran downstairs to show gran.

I’ll never forget the look on her face as I stepped into the kitchen.

She immediately dropped the plate she’d been holding, her lip quivering as the porcelain shattered into a thousand pieces.

Her face turned pale as death.

She looked like she’s seen a ghost.

I began to cry, and she smiled then, weakly and distantly, wiping away my tears. She told me to go wash my face, and that lunch was ready.

But I knew I’d done something terribly wrong, and I’ve never looked inside mom’s jewelry box ever again.

Until now.

Closing the bedroom door quietly behind me, I walk over to the vanity. I sit down on the plush velvet stool, running my hands over the lid of the jewelry box perched in front of the mirror. My fingers explore the grooves in the rippling apple wood, carved by my gran as a wedding gift to my mom. I never noticed before, but the carvings are different to her usual subjects. Most of gran’s work has a woodland or a floral theme – oak leaves, acorns, irises and wild hares peeping out from dense foliage. Her art is inspired by the forest, the land. But these carvings are an ode to the sea, an oceanic love song wrought in wood and careful hours.

Just above the latch, a cluster of delicately carved seashells encircles two fish, swimming together to form a circle. The top strip is a riot of tiny sea snails, sea anemones, crabs and corals.

Taking a deep breath, I click open the latch on the box.

Inside, fine gold necklaces spill out of their trays, tangled up with diamond earrings, an emerald bracelet, and the pearl necklace I wrapped around my head as a child.

I lift the tray out of the box, and find more gold necklaces, a mother-of-pearl brooch, more pairs of earrings.

No silver rings shaped like sea snakes biting their own tails.

Damn.

I take every piece of jewelry out of the box, untangling the whole mess in case the ring is hidden in a clump of necklaces and earrings.

But a few minutes later, I’ve picked through the entire collection and I’m still no closer to finding the ring.

Fine. On to Plan B.

I swing open my mom’s wardrobe doors, standing on my tiptoes to reach the hatboxes she keeps at the top of the cupboard.

I open each of them up one by one, searching through old family cutlery, wristwatches, an azure blue silk scarf folded neatly around a large pocket watch on a chain.

But no ring.

I turn my mom’s entire wardrobe inside out, placing everything back perfectly in place afterwards.

Normally, I’d feel bad about scratching around in her stuff like this. But I’m still reeling from the discovery that she threw away all of gran’s things without telling me. My anger dampens my guilt, and I work quickly, searching her bedside table, the pockets of her spare handbags and purses, even the bathroom cabinet in my parents’ ensuite bathroom.

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The ring is nowhere to be found.

I give up. Maybe she sold it or donated it to charity like the rest of gran’s things.

I sit down at the vanity, picking up mom’s empty jewelry box. I’m about to start returning its treasures, placing it back down on the vanity, when I notice a slight clinking.

Faint, muted. The sound of metal hitting against wood.

I look again inside the box, removing the light wooden tray.

Empty.

I turn the box over, shake it gently.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Delicately, feeling like Alice peering down into the deep, dark rabbit hole, I feel around the box’s interior. There’s a momentary shiver against my fingertips. I sweep them over the same spot, and they brush against a filmy, feather-fine filament. It’s just long enough to pinch. I take a deep breath, and pull on it.

The wooden panel lifts up, revealing a secret compartment at the bottom of the box.

And there, lying bare against the rosy wood, is the silver ring.

My hands are shaking as I lift it up out of the box.

The metal is cold, as if it were made of snow rather than metal.

Holding the ring between my thumb and forefinger, I hold it up to the light. The sinewy serpent seems to twist, radiant silvery scales shifting and slithering, flashing between light and shadow as I turn the ring round and round.

I’m tempted to try the ring on. I want to wear it.

But an image flashes through my mind. The girl from gran’s story, turning into a sea snake as the sea witch placed a silver ring upon her finger.

This isn’t the same ring – it can’t be, I saw photographs of my gran and my own mother wearing it, human as can be, no scales in sight – but still.

Some dread boils up in my stomach at the thought of putting it on, even though I feel like it’s meant for me, has always been meant for me.

This ring was made for me.

I look at my reflection in the vanity mirror, as I hold the ring in the palm of my hand. I have this sudden, intense urge to hold the ring up to my eye and look at myself – at my reflection specifically – through it. I have no clue where the bizarre idea came from, but it tugs at the corners of my mind. Some memory, perhaps.

I raise the ring, and –

CRASH.

The sound rips through the house.

It came from downstairs.

I drop the ring, springing to my feet in an instant.

I’m down the stairs and through the living room door in just a few seconds, my hands pulled into fists, ready to go all Karate Kid on whatever it is I find.

What I find, however, is Jamie kneeling over the glass coffee table, which has finally shattered as my mom long ago predicted it would.

Jamie’s clutching my dad’s bottle of fifty-year-old Isle of Sky Whiskey, cradling it like a baby.

Almost half of it is gone.

Zee’s on the sofa, her hand over her mouth as she fights back giggles, while Grace sits stony-faced next to her.

“Ashling, oooh my god Aaaashling, babe,” Jamie says, reaching out to me. “S-sorry. I think I might have… might have… broken your table.” He giggles then, snorting with laughter.

“Why is Jade so lame?” She says, more to herself than anyone else. “Why does he look at every other goddam girl except meeee?”

“Jamie, put down the bottle,” Grace says. “You’ve had too-”

“Grace, Grace,” Jamie gasps, interrupting her. “You know… you know how much I fucking love you, babe. Seriously. But you’ve got to.. hic… you’ve gotta let go. Relax. Your mama’s not here now. You don’t need to be a good little… little… hic… church mouse for her all the time. I know how much you struggle, to be her perrrrfect little angel every… single… day. I love you.. so… sooo much and it hurts me to see… see you hold back so much. Don’t keep it… hic… bottled… Let it go. Let it go, can’t.. hold it back anymore…”

And with that she launches into a slurring rendition of Let it Go, until Zee starts laughing and clapping so loud that Jamie bows dramatically, falling over in the process.

“See, Zee understands. Right Zee? Yooou get it.”

Jamie pulls herself up, sloshing whiskey across the carpet as she swings the bottle in Zee’s direction. Zee responds by screaming with laughter behind her hands, her eyes watering with mirth, as Grace’s frown grows deeper, her posture stiffer.

“I’ve been gone five minutes and you’re already wasted?” I say, grabbing the bottle from out of Jamie’s hand. “What the hell Jamie?”

“F-fffive minutes?” Jamie slurs. “Try fifty. You were gone aaaages.”

“I’m sorry Ashling, we didn’t know what she was doing in the kitchen,” Grace says. She rises from the couch, pulling Jamie to her feet, which is quite a feat considering how tiny Grace is compared to Jamie’s leggy, statuesque height.

“We’re in the spare room, right?” Grace says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Zee, you’re with me.”

“I’ll come back and clean up the mess after I get her into bed,” Grace says, leading Jamie to the door.

“No need,” I say. “Just make her drink water. A whole lot. And make sure she goes to sleep without breaking anything else.”

“I’m rreally sorry Ashling, I really am,” Jamie says. “My mom will pay for it. One thing she’s good for. I wish she could b-buy me love. Then I could have him.”

Tears well up in her eyes, and Grace quietly says goodnight, gently leading Jamie upstairs to the guest bedroom.

“Let’s do this tomorrow,” I say, stopping Zee as she bends down to pick up a shard of glass from the coffee table. “I’ll send a text to my parents so they know what happened. I’m too exhausted to think about any of this right now.”

Zee nods in agreement, yawning loudly as she drags herself upstairs.

I follow behind her, knowing I should be worried about the parental wrath that’s sure to ensue in the morning, but too tired to care right now.

Before I crawl into my bed next to Zee, I go back into my parents’ room, and place the silver ring back in its secret chamber, just like I found it.

Later, I toss beneath my sheets, drowning beneath the waves of sleep.

A dark ocean of slumber.

A troubled, stormy sea of interwoven, bewildering dreams, haunted by a solitary figure.

Him.