For 55 years, I believed the man I loved had disappeared in Vietnam. Every year, I flew to his memorial with a white rose, still keeping the promise I’d made to him at 21. But on my latest flight, the captain suddenly called my name over the speaker and said something that made my heart stop.
I was twenty-one when Thomas disappeared over Vietnam. I’m seventy-six now, and until last Tuesday, I thought the worst thing he’d ever done was die without saying goodbye.
I told him engineers made terrible boyfriends.
We met in college when I was eighteen. He offered to split a cup of coffee with me. He had fifty cents. I had twenty.
“That’s not half,” I told him.
“I’m an engineering student. I can make the numbers work.”
I was studying literature. He claimed novels were naive things full of people who could solve their problems by speaking honestly.
