PART 2
I started crying before I could stop myself.
Then Danny said something that changed everything.
“Someone didn’t want me to come back to you. You won’t believe who.”
“What?”
He glanced toward the hallway.
“Your sister.”
I actually laughed.
“Helen?”
“She knew I was alive.”
“No.”
“She knew.”
“That’s impossible.”
Danny reached for my hand.
“She made sure you disappeared before I could find you.”
And just like that, what should have been the happiest moment of my life became the beginning of the ugliest question I’d ever had to ask.
I let Danny come inside.
For the next two hours, he told me a story that made fifty-five years of my life look completely different.
“I spent months recovering. For a while, I couldn’t even write.”
“Who took care of you?”
“Doctors. Nurses. There was one nurse, Margaret, who helped me a lot.”
I squeezed his hand.
“I’m glad somebody was there.”
“So was I.”
“How long were you there?”
“Almost a year.”
“And you thought about me?”
“Every day.”
“Then why didn’t you come home?”
Danny looked away.
“I wrote to you as soon as I could.”
“I never got anything.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because eventually Helen contacted me.”
“Helen?”
“She said you’d moved on.”
“No.”
“She told me you were seeing someone else. She said you didn’t want me showing up and ruining your new life.”
I stood up.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I thought so too.”
“Then why didn’t you come anyway?”
“I tried finding you. You’d moved.”
“Because Helen convinced me to!”
Danny nodded slowly.
“That was the point.”
I felt sick.
Then he added another detail that made his story seem almost impossible not to believe.
“I think she wanted me herself.”
“What?”
“She’d always been jealous of us.”
“No. Helen married your friend.”
“Eventually.”
I stared at him.
“Do you have her letters?”
His expression shifted.
“I burned them.”
“You burned them?”
“I couldn’t keep reading the words that stole you from me.”
It sounded heartbreaking.
At the time, I thought it was.
Helen called that evening.
I declined the call.
She called again.
I turned off my phone.
The next morning, she came to my door.
“Sis? I know you’re home.”
I stood behind the curtain and didn’t move.
Danny touched my shoulder.
“Don’t hate her because of me.”
I looked at him.
“She stole fifty-five years from us.”
“We don’t have enough time left for hate.”
That sentence convinced me more than almost anything else he’d said.
What kind of liar defended the person who had supposedly ruined his entire life?
If only I’d realized I was asking the wrong question.
Over the next three weeks, Danny and I became nineteen again.
Almost.
We talked until midnight, remembering people I’d forgotten and places that no longer existed.
“Remember the diner?” he asked.
“Remember spilling a milkshake on my dress?”
“You bumped my arm.”
“You were staring at the waitress.”
“I was staring at you.”
I laughed.
“Still a liar.”
His phone buzzed on the table.
Danny glanced at the screen, then turned it facedown.
“Aren’t you going to answer?”
“No.”
“Who is it?”
“Someone from my old life.”
Something in his tone made me pause.
Then he smiled and took my hand.
“That life doesn’t matter anymore. This one does.”
I wanted desperately to believe him.
So I did.
A few nights later, Danny held both my hands.
“Why are we dating at seventy-five?”
I laughed.
“What should we be doing?”
“Getting married.”
I stared at him.
“Danny…”
“You’re already my wife.”
For the first time in fifty-five years, I stopped thinking only about what I’d lost.
Instead, I started thinking about how much time I might still have.
We planned a tiny backyard wedding.
Danny wanted it soon.
Very soon.
Around the same time, he began asking practical questions.
“Is the house paid off?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a will?”
“Why?”
“We’re not twenty anymore, sweetheart. We should know how to take care of each other.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot.”
“About us? Of course.”
“I meant the money.”
He smiled.
“Same thing at our age.”
It sounded reasonable.
At least, I wanted it to.
The day before the wedding, I invited my family over and announced our surprise.
“We’re getting married tomorrow.”
Everyone began talking at once.
Then Helen arrived.
She walked into my backyard, saw Danny, and stopped cold.
Danny leaned toward me.
“That’s the face of someone who never expected her lie to walk through the door.”
Helen looked at me.
“You cannot marry that man.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Now you care?”
“Please.”
“You knew he was alive.”
Her face changed.
“Who told you that?”
“He did.”
Helen looked at Danny.
Then back at me.
“You need to listen to me.”
“I listened to you fifty-five years ago!”
“Not here.”
