When I struggled with a stubborn jar of jam at the refreshments table, he appeared beside me.
“Would you like me to fight that thing for you?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Are you offering to open a jar, or are you asking me to marry you?”
He laughed so loudly that the woman arranging the sandwiches turned around.
“Mrs. Margaret, if I proposed every time I opened a jar for a woman, I’d be a very busy man.”
“Then perhaps you should learn to open them properly.”
He managed it on the first attempt.
“See? Husband material.”
I shook my head, smiling despite myself.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, young man.”
“Too late. I’ve already decided you’re trouble.”
I should have recognized how quickly he learned what made me laugh.
But I was lonely, and he made me feel alive.
My first husband, Robert, had died eleven years earlier. We had shared a good marriage, although the final years were dominated by his illness and the exhausting routine of hospital visits.
