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I’m Richard, turning 61 this year. My wife passed away eight years ago, and since then, my life has been nothing but long, silent corridors. My children were kind enough to come, but their lives moved too quickly for me to keep up. They came with envelopes of money, left medicine, and left.
I thought I’d made peace with loneliness until one night, scrolling through Facebook, I saw a name I thought I’d never see again: Anna Whitmore.
Anna, my first love. The girl I once promised to marry. She had hair the color of autumn leaves, and her laugh was a song I still remembered after forty years. But life had separated us: her family moved suddenly, and she was married off before I could even say goodbye.
When I saw his photo again, with streaks of gray in his hair, but with the same kind smile, I felt as if time had gone back. We started talking. Old stories, long phone calls, and then coffee dates. The warmth was instant, as if the decades between us had never happened.
And so, at 61, I remarried my first love.
Our wedding was simple. I wore a navy suit, she wore ivory silk. My friends whispered that we looked like teenagers again. For the first time in years, I felt a surge of energy.
That night, after the guests had left, I poured two glasses of wine and led her to her bedroom. Our wedding night. A gift I thought age had stolen from me.
When I helped her out of her dress, I noticed something strange. A scar near her collarbone. Then another, along her wrist. I frowned, not at the scars, but at the way she flinched when I touched them.
“Anna,” I said softly, “did he hurt you?”
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