“I dated. I traveled. I worked. I had friends. I built a life. A good one, mostly.”
I looked over my shoulder.
“But every time the phone rang late at night, some ridiculous part of me wondered.”
Douglas was crying openly now.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your apology.”
His face fell.
I returned to his bedside.
“I want the truth.”
He nodded.
“All of it.”
“All of it.”
I sat.
Then, after forty-one years, I did something so simple that it nearly broke me.
I rested my head against his hand.
For a while, none of us spoke.
Lucas quietly moved to the window.
He gave us privacy without leaving.
Douglas brushed his thumb across my knuckles.
“Do you remember the meteor shower?”
I laughed through my tears.
“You told me it was going to happen at eleven.”
“It was supposed to.”
“It happened at three in the morning.”
