I believed saying goodbye to the love of my life would be the most painful thing I would ever endure. The hardest part came after Thomas was gone, when I learned that our reunion had never been an accident.
He had returned to my life for a reason, and the truth was hidden inside a wooden box that arrived the morning after his funeral. At seventy-three, I found myself back in the same town I had left at seventeen. The streets were narrower than I remembered.
The houses looked smaller, and the old bus station had been replaced by a pharmacy. Still, every corner seemed to hold a piece of the girl I used to be.
I rented a modest apartment above a bakery and tried to make my pension stretch from one month to the next. It never did. So I pinned my old nursing badge onto a clean uniform and returned to work at the local hospital.
I had spent most of my life caring for strangers. Retirement had lasted barely a year before overdue bills pushed me back into the familiar scent of disinfectant, medication, and quiet human fear. There had been men over the years. Kind men, mostly. A teacher who brought me flowers.
A widower who wanted companionship. A doctor who once asked me to move to California with him. But none of them had ever been Thomas. Even after more than fifty years, no one had come close. Thomas and I had been seventeen when we fell in love.
Back then, we believed forever was something two people could promise at a bus station and somehow make true. I had earned a place at a college several hours away. Thomas planned to remain in town and join his father’s hardware business.
On the morning I left, he stood beside my suitcase with tears in his eyes. “Please don’t go, Nancy.” “I have to,” I told him.
“I worked too hard to give this up.” Discover more Psychology Economics TV & Video “Then you’re breaking my heart.” I kissed him goodbye and boarded the bus. For years, I told myself I had made the right decision.
But making the right decision does not always prevent regret.How-To, DIY & Expert Content I never saw Thomas again. At least, that was what I believed. One rainy morning, while I sat in my apartment stirring instant coffee, the telephone rang. I knew it would be Raymond before I answered.
Raymond was my cousin, though we had barely spoken in thirty years. Since my return, however, he had begun calling every week. His questions always sounded caring at first. “How’s the apartment treating you?”.