A representative for Usha Vance said Saturday that she wore no wedding ring to an outing last week because she simply forgot it.
The second lady caused tongues to wag on Wednesday when she visited U.S. Marines in North Carolina with first lady Melania Trump after photos circulated of her without a ring on her left hand.
But a spokesperson for the second lady gave a less newsworthy explanation.
The rep told People on Saturday that Vance is “a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths, and forgets her ring sometimes.”
That didn’t wash with some observers, but that’s her answer.
Rumors about the second couple’s union swirled when the vice president recently hugged Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, in a way that some observers saw as overly intimate.
Vance also caught flak when he said he hoped his wife, who is Hindu, would one day convert to Catholicism.
“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church?” he asked. “Yes, I honestly do wish that, because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way. But if she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me.” ”
The Vances met at Yale Law School, married in 2014 and have three children between the ages of 3 and 8.