Part 1:
I believed saying goodbye to the man I had loved for most of my life would be the most painful thing I would ever endure.
I was wrong.
The true reason Thomas had returned to me was not revealed until after he was gone.
Rain tapped gently against the window of my small rented apartment as I sat alone, stirring a cup of instant coffee that my budget could barely afford.
At seventy-three, I had returned to the town I had left when I was seventeen. The buildings had changed, the shops had different names, and many familiar faces were gone.
Yet somehow, the streets still remembered me.
My pension was not enough to cover the rising rent and everyday expenses, so I had taken my old nursing badge from a drawer, bought a new uniform, and returned to work at the local hospital.
It was the same profession I had retired from years earlier.
Coming home was strange.
Almost nothing looked the way I remembered, but everything carried the same feeling.
I had never married.
I had never had children.
There had been a few relationships over the years and several kind men who had tried to build a life with me.
But none of them had ever been Thomas.
I had not spoken his name aloud in more than fifty years.
Thomas had been my first love.
We were both seventeen when we met, young enough to believe that promises could last forever simply because we meant them when we made them.
I had earned a place at a college in another city.
Thomas had chosen to remain in town and work at his father’s hardware business.
On the day I left, he stood beside me at the bus station with tears in his eyes.
“Please don’t go, Nancy,” he begged.
“I have to,” I told him. “I worked too hard to give this opportunity up.”
“Then you’re breaking my heart.”
Those were almost the last words he ever said to me.
I boarded the bus, left town, and spent the next fifty-six years believing I would never see him again.
The ringing telephone pulled me out of the memory.
I knew who it was before I answered.
“Nancy, it’s Raymond,” a cheerful voice said. “I’m checking on my favorite cousin.”
Favorite cousin.
