I knew those eyes.
“Danny?”
He smiled.
Then he opened his palm.
The other vending-machine ring was resting there.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
My knees almost gave out beneath me.
He caught my arm.
“Easy.”
“You’re dead.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
I stared at him.
“Danny…”
“I never forgot you.”
“You really came back.”
“I told you I would.”
“You’re fifty-five years late.”
His smile faded.
“I know.”
I started crying before I could stop myself.
Then Danny said something that changed everything.
“Someone didn’t want me to come back to you. You won’t believe who.”
“What?”
He glanced toward the hallway.
“Your sister.”
I actually laughed.
“Helen?”
“She knew I was alive.”
“No.”
“She knew.”
“That’s impossible.”
Danny reached for my hand.
“She made sure you disappeared before I could find you.”
And just like that, what should have been the happiest moment of my life became the beginning of the ugliest question I’d ever had to ask.
I let Danny come inside.
For the next two hours, he told me a story that made fifty-five years of my life look completely different.
“I spent months recovering. For a while, I couldn’t even write.”
“Who took care of you?”
“Doctors. Nurses. There was one nurse, Margaret, who helped me a lot.”
I squeezed his hand.
“I’m glad somebody was there.”
“So was I.”
“How long were you there?”
“Almost a year.”
“And you thought about me?”
“Every day.”
“Then why didn’t you come home?”
Danny looked away.
“I wrote to you as soon as I could.”
“I never got anything.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because eventually Helen contacted me.”
“Helen?”
“She said you’d moved on.”
“No.”
“She told me you were seeing someone else. She said you didn’t want me showing up and ruining your new life.”
I stood up.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I thought so too.”
“Then why didn’t you come anyway?”
“I tried finding you. You’d moved.”
“Because Helen convinced me to!”
Danny nodded slowly.
“That was the point.”
I felt sick.
Then he added another detail that made his story seem almost impossible not to believe.
“I think she wanted me herself.”
“What?”
“She’d always been jealous of us.”
“No. Helen married your friend.”
“Eventually.”
I stared at him.
“Do you have her letters?”
His expression shifted.
“I burned them.”
“You burned them?”
