Liberating for both of us.
We had met five times in eighteen months.
Coffee.
Once lunch.
Once a walk.
Never my home.
Not yet.
He never asked.
On my seventy-second birthday, I invited him to the party.
I almost changed my mind three times.
Then didn't.
He arrived alone.
Carrying a small brown-paper package.
My stomach tightened.
He saw my face.
“It's not a deed.”
I laughed.
Progress.
We sat at the edge of the yard.
He handed it to me.
“Open it whenever.”
I opened it then.
Inside was the antique locket.
The one I had given him four years earlier.
The one he had tossed onto the table before telling me I did not belong in “his” house.
I stared.
“You kept it?”
He nodded.
“Kristen threw it in a drawer.”
“After the house sold, the buyer's people boxed our personal things.”
“I found it.”
He looked embarrassed.
