Anna reminded me of that conversation almost forty years later, when we finally met again.
By then, I had forgotten how easily she could make me feel seventeen.
We fell in love the way young people often do: completely, foolishly, and with the absolute certainty that nothing in the world could ever separate us.
We walked home from school together. We shared ice cream at the little shop near the town square. We sat beneath an old oak tree and talked about the future as though it were a place we could reach simply by wanting it badly enough.
Anna wanted to become a teacher.
I wanted to start a small business and build a house with a garden where she could grow roses.
We promised each other that one day, we would get married.
“Not some enormous wedding,” she told me once. “Just you, me, and a few people who love us.”
