“All the time?”
She nodded.
“He told us about the girl behind the bleachers.”
My heart tightened.
“He did?”
“He said you were the one person he never stopped wondering about.”
Michael looked down.
“He kept an old photograph of you.”
“I didn’t know.”
“It’s in his study.”
I went into the study.
Michael followed me.
He opened the bottom drawer.
Inside was an old high school yearbook.
He handed it to me.
I opened it carefully.
There he was.
Seventeen years old.
Messy hair.
Crooked smile.
The boy who had promised me a diamond ring.
I turned the page.
There was a handwritten note beside his photograph.
I had never seen it before.
“Margaret—
If life takes us somewhere else, I hope you know this:
You were the first girl I ever loved.
And some part of me will always be waiting for you.”
I pressed the yearbook against my chest.
Michael turned away.
Rebecca began crying quietly in the doorway.
That was the first time we mourned Thomas together.
Not as enemies.
Not as a widow and his children.
But as three people who had lost the same man.
I never moved permanently back into the mansion.
I couldn’t.
