How he eventually invited the girl to dinner.
How they ate pizza at a sticky little restaurant.
Then drove to a beautiful lake surrounded by tall pine trees.
I told him about the dock.
The sunset.
And the foolish young man who looked at a girl he’d known for eight days and told her he intended to marry her.
Mark smiled.
“Bold fellow.”
“Very.”
“Did she say yes?”
“Eventually.”
I continued.
I told him
about their wedding.
Their honeymoon.
Their daughter.
The difficult years.
The happy years.
The accident that damaged the man’s finger.
The wedding band that no longer fit.
And the summer when a pale ring mark appeared on his sunburned hand.
I told him about a wife who thought her husband had fallen in love with someone else.
And how terribly wrong she had been.
Mark leaned forward.
He was listening closely.
“Had he stopped loving her?”
The question nearly broke me.
I shook my head.
“No.”
I squeezed his hand.
“He loved her so much that he was afraid of forgetting her.”
Mark looked down at the ring in his palm.
I continued.
“So he asked her to marry him again. Just to be sure she understood.”
He sat quietly for a moment.
Then placed the ring back around his finger.
He closed the hinge.
Click.
He smiled faintly.
“That’s
a good story.”
“It is.”
“Does it end happily?”
I looked at him.
My husband.
The man who no longer knew my name.
Who couldn’t remember our daughter.
Who had forgotten the lake where he once promised to marry me.
But who still treasured a ring without understanding why.
“Yes,” I whispered. “It does.”
He tilted his head.
“How can you be sure?”
I leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
“Because she’s still here.”
He smiled.
Then, slowly, he rested his hand on my knee.
Exactly the way he used to when we were young and driving with the windows rolled down.
I placed my hand over his.
Outside, the ducks drifted across the pond.
The late afternoon sunshine turned the water silver and gold.
And for a moment, it looked almost like Loon Lake.
Mark doesn’t remember.
But I do.
I remember the hardware store.
The terrible hinge drawing.
The pizza.
The dock.
The wedding.
The ring.
The diagnosis.
And the day he chose me all over again.
I remember everything he is slowly losing.
