He told her I stopped answering his letters.
He told her he returned home intending to propose, only for my mother to tell him I had met another man and wanted nothing more to do with him.
My mother had even returned several of Thomas’s letters and made him promise not to contact me.
Evelyn had once asked Thomas:
“Do you still love her?”
His answer had been:
“Not the way I love you.”
For some reason, I needed to read that.
Thomas had not spent fifty years secretly waiting for me.
He and Evelyn had built a real marriage.
Just as Robert and I had.
Neither life was a placeholder.
Evelyn had even encouraged Thomas to keep the ring.
Over the years, she joked about “Margaret”—the girl behind the bleachers, the girl who hated raisins, the girl who had once broken Thomas’s nose with a volleyball.
