A CHALLENGE FOR WRITERS #3

"The morning’s bright sunlight spilled in the large window and across the parquet floor, filling every nook and cranny with a warming glow. The light revealed…"

The morning’s bright sunlight spilled in the large window and across the parquet floor, filling every nook and cranny with a warming glow. The light revealed that there was a wedding ring glimmering in between a ruby-colored sofa and a regal Persian carpet.

As Mary, one of the Electra Palace Hotel’s maids, was sweeping up the floor after the party held on the evening before, she found the ring. Part of her was stupefied. Part of her was not surprised at all.

It was when she was about to finish her work, after having already taken the ring to a little room which the hotel used as a kind of lost and found section, that Nancy, a well dressed lady, walked in and Mary kindly stopped her: “Sorry but the ballroom is closed”. Nancy, looking a bit nervous and pretending she had not heard Mary’s words asked, with a trembling voice, whether the maid had found a wedding ring and… added "I’m afraid mine slipped off my finger while I was dancing here, last evening".

Mary made a silent sign to Nancy to follow her. They went through a long corridor at the end of which they stopped in front of the lost and found hotel room. Mary unlocked its door, activated the thumb latch of a metal cabinet and  pulled the drawer on the front face of which there was a label reading ‘valuables’. She picked up a cellophane envelope signed and dated in ink. As she showed it to the lady, she added ‘I bet, it’s probably yours’. Nancy could hardly believe her eyes… Not her husband's name but her own was engraved on it!!!©Belita