It was our anniversary. Not just an anniversary, but the anniversary. The one where I thought we’d finally truly solidify everything. I’d spent weeks agonizing over his gift, finding something meaningful, something that screamed ‘I love you and I see you.’ So when he handed me a small, velvet pouch, my heart swelled. This is it, I thought. This is the big moment.
I opened it. Inside lay a locket. Small, silver, plain. It looked… old. Tarnished, even. Not antique-old, but forgotten-in-a-drawer-old. It was stiff; I couldn’t even pry it open to see if there was anything inside. Just a plain, slightly scratched silver heart on a thin, almost brittle chain.
My smile faltered. I tried to hide it, I really did. I looked up at him, and his eyes were shining with such intense adoration, such genuine hope, that a shard of guilt pricked me. But it quickly dulled under a wave of bitter disappointment. This? This is what he chose?
Katie Grant Dickson and George Traweek Dickson II with their quadruplets on May 28, 2025 | Source: Instagram/katie.grant.dickson
He wasn’t wealthy, I knew that. We both struggled sometimes. But I thought… I thought I was worth more than something that looked like it came from a forgotten corner of a thrift store. I thought I was worth effort, newness, something chosen with me in mind, not just whatever was lying around.
“It’s beautiful,” I lied, the words tasting like ash. He beamed, oblivious. Or perhaps, pretending to be. I clutched the cold metal in my palm, feeling a hollowness spread through my chest.
That locket became a silent wedge between us. I wore it sometimes, out of obligation, a heavy weight against my skin. Every time I caught a glimpse of it, I’d remember the dull gleam, the stiff hinge, the cheapness I felt it represented. Did he really love me? Or was I just convenient?
Our arguments started getting sharper. I’d snap at him for small things, projecting my resentment onto his habits, his lack of ambition, anything. I convinced myself it wasn’t just the locket, but it was always there, a symbol of how little he valued me, how little he truly saw me.
He tried, I suppose. He’d bring me flowers sometimes, cheap grocery store bouquets that would wilt in a day. He’d make my favorite meal, burnt around the edges. But it never felt enough. Not after that locket. I pushed him away, slowly, incrementally. I stopped reaching for his hand, stopped meeting his gaze with the same warmth.
Katie Grant Dickson with newborn quadruplets on June 11, 2025 | Source: Instagram/katie.grant.dickson
Then, the accident. A phone call in the middle of the night. A drunk driver. He was gone. Just like that. The world tilted on its axis. My heart, which had felt so hardened, fractured into a million pieces. The suddenness, the finality… it was unbearable. All the petty arguments, all the unspoken resentments, they crashed down on me with the force of a tidal wave.
I went to his apartment, a ghost wandering through the remnants of a life cut short. His family was there, solemn and grieving. His sister, her eyes red-rimmed, approached me gently. She handed me a small, tattered leather-bound journal. “He wanted you to have this,” she whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. “He wrote in it every day for the last year.”
I fled, clutching the journal, needing to be alone. Back in my own silent apartment, I opened it, my hands shaking. Page after page of his familiar scrawl, his hopes, his dreams, his daily observations. And then, I found it. The entry from our anniversary.
“Today was the day. I finally gave it to her,” it read. “Her smile… it almost broke me. I know it’s not much. Not like the things she deserves. But it’s all I have. It was Mom’s. The last thing she ever held. I remember her wearing it, every single day. I spent my last dime getting it polished, fixing the chain, trying to make it beautiful again for her. I wanted her to know how much I love her, how she’s my everything, just like Mom was my everything.”
One of Katie Grant Dickson’s quadruplets at the hospital | Source: Instagram/katie.grant.dickson
My breath hitched. My vision blurred. Mom’s locket. The one she wore until the day she… until her illness took her. His mother, who died when he was just a child. A fact I knew, a grief I had always respected. And I had dismissed it as cheap junk.
The words screamed off the page: “I wanted her to know how much I love her, how she’s my everything.” Every complaint, every cold shoulder, every moment of disdain I’d harbored over that locket twisted into a poisoned dagger in my gut. He hadn’t given me a cheap gift; he’d given me the most precious, irreplaceable piece of his shattered heart. And I had thrown it back in his face, silently, cruelly.
Tears streamed down my face, hot and relentless. My chest ached with a pain far deeper than grief for his loss. It was the pain of profound regret, of a love misunderstood and ultimately, unforgiven by myself. He had seen me as his ‘everything,’ and I had seen his most sacred offering as an insult.
I scrambled to find the locket. It was still in my jewelry box, tucked away, almost forgotten. I pulled it out, cradling it in my palm. It felt different now. No longer cold, but warm with the ghost of his mother’s touch, and his boundless, foolish love. I traced the faint scratches, the subtle tarnishing that now seemed like a patina of history, not neglect.
If only I had known. If only I had asked. If only I had looked past my own superficial expectations.
I remembered how stiff it was, how I couldn’t open it. Now, filled with a desperate need to connect with him, to understand every facet of this precious artifact, I tried again. My thumb pressed hard against the small indentation on the side. Nothing. I tried again, my nails digging into the tiny seam. Still nothing.
I tried a third time, a silent plea escaping my lips. “Please,” I whispered, “just open.” With a soft, almost imperceptible click, the two halves finally gave way. They swung open slowly, revealing the inner chambers. My heart hammered. Was there a picture of his mother? A tiny inscription?
I peered inside, my breath held captive in my throat. The space was tiny, hardly big enough for even a miniature portrait. But there it was. Not one picture, but two, meticulously cut and placed inside each half.
A customized pillow bearing an older woman’s printed picture | Source: Midjourney
My gaze fixated on the first image. A woman. Young, beautiful, with hair the color of midnight and eyes that sparkled with an undeniable mischief. She wasn’t his mother. I knew his mother from old photographs; she had been a gentle blonde. This woman was a stranger.
Then, my eyes darted to the other side. My breath hitched. Another picture. This one of a child. A boy, no older than five or six, with those same mischievous, dark eyes. He looked startlingly like… like him.
The locket slipped from my trembling fingers, clattering against the hardwood floor. It lay there, open, exposing its devastating secret. He had a secret family. A wife, a child. This entire time. Our entire relationship. A lie.
The true value of the locket wasn’t that it was his mother’s. It wasn’t the sacrifice he made to restore it. It was that it was the only thing he had that contained the truth. And he gave it to me. Either as a final, desperate confession. Or as a cruel, silent punishment. And I, in my blindness, had never even opened it.
My grief for his loss was instantly eclipsed by a volcanic eruption of betrayal. The cheap gift wasn’t cheap at all. It was priceless. It held a truth so shattering, it tore apart not just my past with him, but my entire understanding of love, trust, and even my own worth. He didn’t just break my heart by dying; he shattered my world by living a lie.
And now, he was gone. And I was left with a cold, silver heart, and a truth I wished I could unsee, a truth that screamed his betrayal into the deafening silence of my solitary life. The ‘cheap’ gift was the most expensive thing I’d ever been given. It cost me everything.
