Wendell told Ruth that Jimmy had been driving to her house on July 14 when a drunk driver struck his car. Jimmy had an engagement ring in his pocket because he planned to ask Ruth to marry him. The accident left him unconscious, and he spent three weeks in a coma at St. Joseph’s Hospital. When he finally woke up, his first request was to see Ruth. But she never came. According to Wendell, Ruth’s mother had visited Jimmy and told him that Ruth had died in a car accident and had already been buried.

Ruth felt the world slipping away beneath her feet. Her mother had told her something completely different—that Jimmy had left her for another girl. Wendell explained that his brother had believed Ruth was gone forever, just as Ruth had believed Jimmy had abandoned her. Their mother had deliberately told each of them a different lie because she despised Jimmy’s poverty and his family. Wendell had once seen Ruth throw the locket from a bluff while fishing and later found it in the mud. Believing she wanted nothing to do with Jimmy, he kept it hidden for years.