“Real pretty number. About your age, I think? Single, too. Moved back here after she got that divorce a couple years ago. Now she was up in Columbia, with the high school. Her husband was supposed to be doing something with the business school, you know, but he did her wrong. You know how it is. Anyway, you should meet her. Ya’ll would look cute together,” Amelia said.

“I know what you’re doing, Amelia,” Curtis said.

“Oh, shut up. You know how us old ladies are. Can’t stop talking. Anyway, Mary Ann is at school now, but she said she thinks she left her old engagement ring in the little cubby hole in the back wall by where she used to keep the register. Now her husband, or ex-husband, he said something bitter and asked for it back, and she wants to record herself throwing it into the river. Well, I suggested it, to be honest, but I think it’s there. Curtis. Please.”

“I don’t know, Amelia. I want to.”

“It’s a powerful metaphor to be the guy who brings her old ring back. Shit, you’ll probably have a white shining outline around you as you walk through that door. We should bring it back together. That’d be cute.”

Eventually, they took a short drive down to the back door and popped the lock open.

“All right, go on back home, Curt. I’ll call you later. Don’t want you getting mixed up in all this.”

Amelia went into more and more of these closed businesses. Over the course of six months, she had renovated the storefronts of seven businesses. All buildings on the riverfront had six foot by six foot display cases on both sides of the front door that were meant to display various goods or trinkets. A holdover from the fifties. She covered the windows in white linen so that you couldn’t see the dilapidated interiors. She decorated the display cases with wicker chairs, novelty signs about wine, stuffed animals, and antique televisions. She would take spools of yarn, pile them by color into a pyramid, and place two decorative sweaters down next to them. She would place a large teddy bear onto a wooden rocking horse and put plastic cowboy hats on both of them. Amelia did this in broad daylight.

She used to date the Sheriff in high school. The only repercussions were social. She got called old, nosy, a busybody, and it was said that she needed a husband. Never within earshot, of course.

Small, old-fashioned towns do not accept change well. A building becoming more and more dilapidated year after year never evokes the focus that a proposed department store might.