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
