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.
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 was studying literature. He claimed novels were naive things full of people who could solve their problems by speaking honestly.
I told him engineers made terrible boyfriends.
He proved me wrong for three years.
Thomas remembered everything. My exams, my mother’s birthday, how I hated raisins in cookies. When my father lost his job, Thomas quietly delivered groceries and said his aunt had bought too much.
His aunt lived in another state.
Everyone expected us to marry after graduation. We expected it too.
During our second year together, Thomas finished college, joined the military, and began training as a pilot. We kept our relationship going through letters and whatever time we could steal together.
“I’ll get you a proper engagement ring when I get back,” he told me.
“Will you do the proposal properly, too? You already asked me badly about six times.”
The night before he deployed, we sat on my parents’ porch until the lights went out inside.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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