For most of my life, I convinced myself that some people were meant to remain in the past, no matter how badly you once wished they could have stayed in your future.
Then, after forty-one years, I heard a voice say my name.
“Ruthie.”
And suddenly, every year between us disappeared.
I was standing outside a hospital room with one hand resting on the door.
Forty-one years.
That was how long it had been since I had seen Jeffrey.
Forty-one years since his final letter.
Forty-one years since he had asked me never to contact him again.
Now his son, Peter, was standing beside me.
“He keeps asking if you’re here yet,” Peter said.
I looked at him.
He had Jeffrey’s eyes.
“Is he awake?”
“He’s trying to stay awake for you.”
For a moment, I almost turned around.
I was sixty years old.
I had spent most of my adult life learning how to exist without Jeffrey.
And less than an hour earlier, I had been sitting alone in chafar my childhood home when the old landline rang.
Now I was about to walk into a room and see the person I had once believed would always be part of my life.
I finally opened the door.
Jeffrey lay in the hospital bed.
He was thinner than I remembered.
His hair was white now, and time had changed almost every feature of his face.
But somehow, he was still unmistakably Jeffrey.
His eyes found mine immediately.
“Ruthie.”
My throat tightened.
Then I noticed something sitting on the chair beside his bed.
A wooden box.
The second I recognized it, I stopped breathing.
It had belonged to my father.
And I hadn’t seen it since the year he died.
—
Jeffrey and I became best friends when we were seventeen.
Not boyfriend and girlfriend.
Just Jeffrey and Ruth.
At least, that was what we always told people.
He dated other girls.
I went out with other boys.
I even attended prom with someone else, although Jeffrey ended up driving me there after my date’s car broke down.
Everyone around us thought we were ridiculous.
Our families were convinced that sooner or later, we would realize what they already believed was obvious.
My mother, Erica, used to watch us sitting at the kitchen table arguing over homework.
“One day,” she would say, “you two are finally going to figure this out.”
