We exchanged a few messages about our families, our health, and the places where life had taken us. She told me her husband had died three years earlier. I told her about Margaret.
For several days, I found myself checking my phone more often than I wanted to admit.
Then Anna asked whether I would like to have coffee.
We arranged to meet at a little café near the town square.
I arrived twenty minutes early.
When she walked through the door, carrying a small handbag and wearing a simple blue coat, I stood so quickly that my chair scraped across the floor.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then she smiled.
“Well,” she said, looking at my gray hair, “you certainly didn’t wait for me to get older before you started looking like a grandfather.”
I laughed.
“And you still insult people before they have finished their coffee.”
