The Bench by the River

And their meeting again was the result of coincidence, or fate, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Life with a husband you barely knew. She dashed for the bright lights of the city, tore a new bride price lower than fifty feet from the ground, and went deep. Yet old wounds still bled, reminders remained over everything: work was everything except happening as well as she had hoped; marriage had gone first not easily but slowly backward instead fast forward without any traction whatsoever-Finally he too died--yet when it really ended at last her melancholy grew into something so many years later that had no name.

But when she came back to bury her father, he had died on the lonely street where time feels like it watches but doesn't move. Went down to Red Bridge—where a preacher with long poems and no pay was lecturing over coffee- and saw there before her on their bench an older man of the same general build, a crooked smile she had once trusted more than anything.

“I always hoped you would be the one to come back here," Liam said.

They talked as though no time had passed at all. About the most ridiculous things—childhood dares for instance, the time he threw a rock through Miller's window or when she dared him to kiss her in pouring rain, and weightier matters too. His divorce. Her regrets.

"Why didn't we try?" she finally asked. "After everything else?"

"I was afraid out there, I'd never be enough for you. So I waited here....and stayed."

On the golden hush of the riverbank, both sat in silence, questions unasked but understood. The wind sighed promises across a tree.

Then something wild and brave overtook her.

She touched his hand.

This time, neither of them let go.