I thought forgiving the person who’d kept us apart would be the hardest part. I was wrong. One name made my husband fall silent, and suddenly I had questions of my own.
When I was nineteen, I promised my husband, Danny, I’d wait for him while he was in Vietnam. I kept that promise for fifty-five years.
Danny and I had been together since high school. We were young, broke, and completely convinced none of that mattered.
One afternoon, Danny bought two cheap metal rings from a vending machine outside our favorite diner.
“There,” he said, sliding one onto my finger. “Now we can afford to get married.”
A week later, we were married at the courthouse.
Seven days after that, Danny was drafted.
At first, his letters came constantly. Then, six months later, they stopped.
I waited.
Eventually, one of Danny’s friends came home.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Danny disappeared after an attack.”
I cried until there was nothing left.
My sister, Helen, tried to convince me to move on.
“You can’t spend your whole life waiting.”
“He promised he’d come home.”
“And what if he can’t?”
Eventually, Helen moved away with her husband, one of Danny’s friends, and convinced me to start over too.
