“No,” he admitted. “But I know what happened there.”
I held on to that tiny difference for years.
No body had been recovered.
Eventually, official papers arrived saying Warren was presumed dead.
People expected me to begin again after that.
Some gently.
Some less gently.
My mother once told me, “You’re still young. Warren wouldn’t want you to spend your life alone.”
Maybe she was right.
But knowing that did not change anything.
I tried going to dinner with a man once, three years after Warren disappeared. He was kind and polite, and when he reached across the table to touch my hand, I went home and cried until sunrise.
There was nothing wrong with him.
He simply wasn’t Warren.
So I stopped trying.
Years passed.
Then decades.
My parents died. Friends married, divorced, remarried, became grandparents.
I moved into a smaller house.
My hair turned gray.
And every year, when our anniversary came around, I still thought about the yellow roses Warren had promised me.
By the time the fifty-sixth anniversary arrived, I thought I had learned how to live with the ache.
It was no longer sharp.
It was simply part of me.
That morning, I made coffee and pulled our old wedding album from the cabinet.
I smiled at the picture of Warren cutting our crooked cake.
Then someone knocked on the front door.
A deliveryman stood outside holding an enormous bouquet.
Yellow roses.
So many that I could barely see over them.
“I think you have the wrong house,” I said.
He checked the name.
“Marlene Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“They’re yours.”
I carried them inside, confused.
At the kitchen table, I began counting.
Fifty-six.
My chest tightened.
Fifty-six roses on our fifty-sixth anniversary.
For several seconds, I could only stare at them.
Then I noticed a cream-colored envelope tucked beneath the ribbon.
My name was written across the front.
Marlene.
The handwriting looked familiar enough to make my stomach twist, but after fifty-six years, I didn’t trust my own memory.
I opened it.
The first line made my hands begin to shake.
Honey, you won’t believe why I had to disappear. Calvin lied to you.
I stopped breathing.
There was more.
Don’t call anyone yet. If you still have the yellow scarf you wore when I left, bring it with you. Take the flowers to the old station at eleven. Please do exactly what I’m asking.
I read the note again.
Then a third time.
My coffee cup slipped from my hand and hit the floor.
