Instead, I said the only thing I could manage.
“I hope one day you get everything you deserve.”
She began to cry.
“So do I.”
We embraced for the last time.
The following Saturday, Anna married Thomas Mitchell.
I stood across the street from the church, hidden among a group of people who had come to watch the wedding procession. I saw her step out in a white dress beside a man old enough to have been her father.
She looked beautiful.
She also looked terrified.
When their car pulled away, I walked home and sat alone in my bedroom until darkness covered the windows.
A few years later, I met Margaret, the woman who became my wife.
Margaret was kind, patient, and funny in a quiet way. She knew nothing about the promises Anna and I had made beneath the oak tree, and I never told her enough to make her feel she was competing with a ghost.
