I thought the hardest part would be forgiving the person who’d kept us apart. I was wrong. One name made my husband go silent, and suddenly I had questions of my own.
When I was nineteen, I promised my husband 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, the kind of ridiculous young couple who thought holding hands under a diner table counted as a date.
We were nineteen, broke, and convinced that didn’t matter.
I promised my husband I’d wait for him.
One afternoon, Danny fed quarters into a vending machine near our favorite diner and came back with two cheap metal rings in plastic capsules.
“There,” he said, sliding one onto my finger. “Now we can afford to get married.”
“You realize this thing will probably turn my finger green?”
“Then everyone will know you’re taken.”
Now we can afford to get married.
A week later, I wore a white sundress to the courthouse. Danny wore his graduation suit.
We exchanged those ridiculous rings.
Seven days later, he was drafted.
At first, his letters came constantly.
Then, six months later, they stopped.
We exchanged those ridiculous rings.
I waited.
Weeks became months.
Finally, a friend from Danny’s unit came home.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Danny disappeared after an attack. I wish I could tell you something different.”
I cried until I had nothing left.
At first, his letters came constantly.
My sister, Helen, practically carried me through that year. “You can’t spend your whole life waiting,” she told me.
“He promised he’d come home.”
“I know.”
“So I’ll wait.”
She squeezed my hand. “But what if he can’t?”
Danny disappeared after an attack.
Eventually, Helen started dating Danny’s friend.
When they decided to move, she came to me. “Everything here reminds you of him,” she said. “Come with us. Start over.”
So I went.
Helen built a life there – marriage, children, grandchildren.
I dated, but nobody was Danny.
And his cheap little ring stayed in a box beside my bed.
Come with us. Start over.
***
Fifty-five years after Danny disappeared, someone knocked on my door.
I opened it.
And forgot how to breathe.
Gray hair. Wrinkles.
Slightly stooped shoulders.
But those eyes?
Nobody was Danny.
I knew those eyes. “Danny?”
He smiled.
Then he opened his palm.
There was the other vending-machine ring.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
Those eyes…
My knees nearly gave out.
