The Ring From the Pawn Shop Wanted to Go Home

I bought a ring at a pawn shop, an old gold band with a small dark stone, cheap and lovely and clearly older than anything else in the case. The man behind the counter sold it to me quickly and did not quite look at it, which I noticed later, when I noticed a lot of things later.

The dreams started the first night I wore it. I dreamed of a house. A specific house, an ordinary house on an ordinary street, that I had never seen in my life. Each night the dream came back with more detail, sharper, richer: the colour of the door, the shape of the porch, a particular tree in the yard, a window with a light on, and always the overwhelming feeling that I needed to go there, that something in the house was waiting for the ring, that the ring wanted to go home.

It got into my waking hours. I would catch myself, driving, having taken turns I did not decide to take, heading in a direction I had no reason to head, toward the part of town I dreamed about. I would come back to myself at a red light with no memory of choosing the route, the ring warm on my finger, my hands steering me somewhere.