Then I would remember.
The silence that followed was always worse.
I was sixty-one when Anna appeared on my Facebook screen.
At first, I thought I was imagining things.
Her profile photograph showed an older woman with silver strands in her dark hair and a gentle smile. Her face had changed, of course. Forty-two years had passed since I had last seen her, and time had left its marks on both of us.
But I recognized her eyes immediately.
There was no mistaking them.
I stared at the photograph for nearly ten minutes before sending a message.
“Anna? Is this really you?”
I expected nothing.
Perhaps she would ignore me. Perhaps she would not remember the boy who had once struggled with a bicycle chain just to impress her.
Then my phone vibrated.
“Richard Hayes? I thought you had disappeared from the earth!”
I laughed aloud for the first time that evening.
