Agnes felt nauseated. It was gone.

She stopped walking. Even though the cooler and picnic basket were lighter now, her arms ached.

“Riley,” she said, “let’s just go. We’re never going to find it.”

He had such a despondent look on his face, Agnes would have thought the ring had been given to him by his fiancée who was a fancy New York sports agent.

“We have to look,” he said. “We have to try.”

Agnes agreed, though she thought it was pointless. They did have to try. The ring was expensive, and beyond that, it was invaluable. It could be replaced, she supposed, in that she could buy another three-carat Tiffany diamond in a platinum setting, but it wouldn’t be the same ring, and CJ would know.

This was awful. Agnes could barely breathe. Riley stood above her, shining the light of his cell phone on the sand.

He said, “Celerie is calling. Should I see if she wants to help us?”

Agnes picked up handful after handful of sand, visualizing the ring. Celerie would bring a certain energy to the search, but right now, Agnes wasn’t sure she could handle another person’s well-intentioned concern.

“Can you just tell her we’ll meet her later?” Agnes said. Celerie had been keen on heading to the Chicken Box to meet up with her roommate. “You can go, Riley. You do not have to stay here with me. This is my fault. I am such an idiot!” Agnes shouted this last word at the night sky, enormous and star-filled above them. This whole big, wide world, this beach with its infinite grains of sand, one ring—a classic diamond solitaire, the most beautiful thing she could ever have hoped to own.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Riley said. He let Celerie’s call go to voice mail.

Half a dozen times, Agnes thought to give up the search, but then as soon as she was ready to dust off and walk dejectedly home, she thought, What if it’s in the next handful? Or the handful after that?

The party up on the Cliff was still raging, although Agnes presumed her parents had left by now. Box didn’t like to stay out past ten.

What would they say when she told them she had lost the ring?

Riley said, “We can come back early tomorrow morning with my father’s metal detector.”

This was the third time he’d suggested the morning, and the metal detector. He knew the search was fruitless.

“You can leave,” Agnes said, also for the third time.

“Agnes…”

“What?” she snapped. She flipped over onto her butt and regarded Riley, who was dutifully holding up the incandescent rectangle of his phone.

He plopped onto the sand next to her and put one of his strong, warm, dentist’s hands on her knee. “Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry about the ring.”

“CJ is going to kill me,” Agnes said.

“He might be upset,” Riley said. “But I’ll point out, it’s just a thing. A precious, valuable thing, I know. But still only a thing.”

Agnes would never be able to summon the courage to tell CJ she’d lost it, which meant that she would have to try to replace it without his knowing. How would she ever come up with the money? She made sixty-eight thousand dollars a year at her job, and she had eleven thousand dollars in savings. She could spend her savings on another ring and pay the rest off in installments, she supposed. Or she could go to her parents for the money. Mommy, Dad, I need twenty-five thousand dollars in order to buy a new engagement ring, and yes, I do know that’s as much as a semester’s tuition, room and board at Dartmouth, but if I don’t replace the ring to its exact specifications, CJ will break up with me.

She could never, ever ask her parents for the money. Maybe Box alone? He liked CJ a lot.

But no.

She had to find it. She wished it had been locked onto her finger, like her Cartier love bracelet.

She searched, handful after handful of sand, inch after inch of beach. She plucked out every pebble, stone, and shell.

“We can come back in the morning,” Riley said. Time number four. “With the metal detector.”

“I can’t leave,” she said. “The tide. What if the tide washes it away?”

“The tide doesn’t come up this far,” Riley said.

Agnes started to cry. The ring was gone. CJ would never forgive her. She would be placed in a category with Annabelle Pippin, a woman who had needlessly wasted his money. Manny Partida had said that CJ lost his temper with Annabelle because she had bid too high on an auction item without his permission—these last three words being operative. It wasn’t that CJ couldn’t afford it. It was that he hadn’t okayed it.

Agnes thought about finding the receipt for the ring on his mail table. It had been right out in the open when Agnes let herself into CJ’s apartment and CJ was in the shower. Almost as if he had wanted Agnes to find it.

Twenty-five thousand dollars.

Agnes would apologize, but he might not forgive her, just as he still hadn’t forgiven Dabney for saying that he and Agnes weren’t a perfect match. What Agnes realized at that moment of sitting on the cold beach, sifting through handful after handful of sand, crying her eyes out, was that Dabney was right. CJ was not only wrong for her but, probably, bad for her.

“Here,” said Riley. He handed her a gently used napkin from the picnic basket, and Agnes blotted her eyes and blew her nose.

Agnes had been dating CJ for an entire year before she told him that Box wasn’t her biological father. She had wanted to keep that part of her history private, but when it looked like things were getting serious, she told him the truth. CJ had told her it was okay, she didn’t need to be ashamed or embarrassed, he was glad she had finally felt comfortable telling him. He had smiled at her reassuringly and said, “It explains certain things about you.”