That was so completely, perfectly Elias that I almost smiled through my tears.
“I wanted us to have this moment.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Since early morning.”
“Eli. It’s nearly noon.”
He looked at me. “I waited 30 years, Jill. A few more hours weren’t going to stop me.”
I took one step toward him, and then I couldn’t stop.
I crossed the distance between us, and he met me halfway, and when I put my hands on his face to make sure he was real, he covered my hands with his and closed his eyes.
He was real. Solid and cold from the morning air and unmistakably, impossibly real.
He was real.
“I never left the town, Eli,” I cried. “I raised our daughter in the same house. Your handwriting is still on my doorframe. I kept every letter and every photograph. I never left.”
He made a sound that wasn’t quite words.
“I waited,” I sobbed. “I just waited.”
Elias pulled me in, and I let him, and we held on to each other under that willow the way you hold something you thought was lost forever and have just, improbably, been handed back.
Finally, against his shoulder, I said: “You still owe me a proper ring.”
Elias laughed, his arms tightening around me. “I’ve got a jeweler in mind. I’ve been saving up for about 30 years.”
I’m finally going to let him keep that promise.
“You still owe me a proper ring.”
***
It’s been a month since my first and only love came back to me.
Stacy is going to walk me down the aisle.
That was the first thing I told her when I called her that evening, still in my coat, face a complete mess. She went very quiet for about four seconds before bursting into the kind of tears she’d clearly been holding since the moment she met her father.
“Mom,” Stacy finally managed. “He has my eyes.”
“I know, sweetheart. You always did look more like him.”
Stacy laughed through her tears, and I laughed through mine.
Stacy is going to walk me down the aisle.
Elias and I are getting married in the spring, under the willow if the weather holds. Small, simple, just the people who matter.
And my daughter is going to take my arm and walk me to him.
Some promises don’t expire. They just wait, patient and certain, for the people who made them to find their way back.
Some promises don’t expire.
