so moved by his raw emotion they felt their feet lift off the ground. How could a man feel so much? What else was inside of him? If only they could find out, if only they knew, a great mystery would be revealed to them. The married women gazed at their own husbands with disapproval, for the men looked away from Samuel’s passionate display. It was too much for them, it was a story they had forgotten a long time ago, when they were thirteen and became men and locked their emotions away so they might navigate the cruelty of the world.
* * *
That night the house on Maiden Lane felt much too empty. Samuel had torn his clothes, as mourners are commanded to do. For seven days he sat outside, even when it rained. He wept until his dark, handsome face was swollen; he had stopped talking, as his father feared he might. Instead, he began to drink rum and he didn’t stop, growing more silent and moody with every drink. When he finally came inside, Maria brought him his father’s wedding ring, hoping it would start him talking. Samuel held it up to the firelight, squinting to see it more clearly.
“There’s a reason my father left this with you,” he said.
“Because he wanted you to have it.”
Samuel Dias shook his head. He knew the way his father approached the world and he knew the meaning of the gift. This ring was a message, one he was grateful to receive. One he hoped Maria would accept. “No. He wanted you to have it.”
Maria shook her head. “It’s a family treasure. I couldn’t possibly.”
“If he wanted to give it to me, he would have placed it on my hand,” Samuel said. “No. It should belong to you. We should do as he wished.” Dias knelt before Maria and slipped the ring onto her finger. “This is what he wanted. For you to be mine.”
She didn’t wish to hurt him. “It cannot happen if I don’t agree to it, and you know I can’t.”
“But you have agreed. See! It won’t come off. We’re married in my father’s eyes,” Samuel insisted. He was making a fool of himself, but he didn’t care. “That’s why he gave you the ring. That’s our tradition.”
Maria attempted to slide the ring off, but it was stuck; even when she took a bar of soap to the band, the ring would not move past her knuckle. It seemed impossible, her hand was so much smaller than Abraham’s.
“The ring fits the person it should belong to,” Samuel told her.
“Are you trying to annoy me?” Maria said.
Samuel shrugged. He didn’t care if he was annoying. He’d certainly been called worse. “I’m trying to tell you the truth.”
Rather than argue, they went upstairs. The bed was small, but it didn’t matter. Rain began in the middle of the night, but they didn’t care. Once more and then never again. That’s what she told herself, but it was a lie and her mouth burned even though she didn’t say the words aloud. He saw that she wore the sapphire and he laughed out loud. She was his, he was sure of it, certainly she was his in bed when she told him never to stop. But in the morning, as they sat across from one another at the table, Samuel took Maria’s hand, and she drew away. She’d thought they had a tacit understanding. No love, no commitment, and certainly no marriage. He, of all people, should understand, for he’d been with her on her hanging day.
“You wanted me here last night,” Samuel said. “Was that a favor because my father died?”
“It was a mistake,” Maria said.
“Because of a curse?” He was as outraged as she’d seen him. “That’s a fool’s belief.”
“Because words have power. And they can’t be taken back.”
Samuel Dias was a practical man, yet in his travels he had seen astonishing things he would never have believed could exist. Such miracles had changed him, convincing him that anything was possible in this world. He had seen golden lions sunning themselves on the rocks of the Barbary Coast, whales with long twisted horns floating under the sea, stars falling from the sky, parrots that could speak as well as a man, clouds of pink birds on the coast of Africa all taking flight at once, a woman with dark hair whom he wanted no matter what the cost.
“A curse can be broken,” he told her, convinced that miracles were