“We stop being idiots and find each other.”
Tears ran down his face.
“Still single?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
My eyes moved toward the ring.
—
I stayed beside Jeffrey through the following day.
We talked for hours.
More than I thought two people possibly could.
He told me about Peter and his daughter, Anna.
I told him about my students and the decades I had spent teaching.
We talked about Margaret.
My mother.
My father.
Even the mistakes all of us had made.
I was angry with Dad.
Part of me probably always will be.
But at sixty, I could understand something that nineteen-year-old Ruth never would have.
My father had been frightened for me.
Just as my mother’s father had once been frightened for her.
Dad had made the wrong choice because he believed he was protecting my future.
Jeffrey had done the same thing.
And so had I.
All of us had kept quiet because we convinced ourselves silence would hurt less.
It didn’t.
—
Two days later, Jeffrey was released from the hospital.
Peter arranged for him to stay with family and receive care at home.
Nobody knows exactly how much time Jeffrey has left.
I have decided I don’t want to count it.
Yesterday, Peter drove him to my house.
Jeffrey and I sat together on the same porch where we used to do our homework as teenagers.
He held my hand.
The wooden box sat beside us.
Finally, Jeffrey smiled.
“I never officially asked you.”
He glanced down at the ring box.
“Ruth, would nineteen-year-old you have said yes?”
I thought about the girl I had been.
