Then having coffee.
Then dinner.
Three months later, Thomas asked me to marry him.
I said yes.
Not because of his enormous house.
Not because of his money.
I barely knew how much he had.
I married him because somewhere inside the seventy-year-old man standing before me was still the boy who had once walked me two miles home in pouring rain without complaining once about his wet shoes.
Unfortunately, Thomas’s children never believed that.
Claire and Daniel loved their late mother deeply.
To them, my presence in their father’s life felt like an insult to Evelyn’s memory.
Then Thomas died suddenly of a heart attack.
At the funeral, Claire looked me directly in the eyes.
“Get out. You’ve embarrassed our mother’s memory long enough.”
Daniel placed my old suitcase at my feet.
I was too numb to fight them.
“Please,” I whispered. “At least let me take Thomas’s photograph.”
