Fifteen years later, she is 37 now. And happy. Or at least she thinks she is, which is one and the same thing, when you really think about it. She’d been living in Macon with a cousin of hers and working at an aviation camp teaching young teenagers how to fly. She wore pigtails regularly now, could pass as one of the young girls, with her gap-toothed smile and jeans.

In the restaurant foyer she waited impatiently for him to arrive. She had written a letter, wanting to see him, knowing the sheer madness of an impulse like this. She still spoke regularly with Pa. Paul’s name never once came up in these fifteen years. So she didn’t know if he was married had a dog cat goldfish and 2.5 kids. He wrote back simply with an address and a date and time. His signature at the bottom the same as it always was, looking like all X’s.

As people walked inside the foyer, she searched their faces for his. He found her long before she recognized him. His arms suddenly around her. Warm and forgiving. Forgetting.