like they were a puzzle worth solving.
Josie stayed after to ask questions.
He answered every one of them patiently, impressed by how sharp they were.
They started talking regularly after that.
Coffee first.
Then dinner.
Then something neither of them planned but both ofit mattered enough to make her usually unflappable daughter anxious.
Pregnancy & Maternity
Thea liked him well enough that evening.
Polite.
Attentive.
Genuinely curious about Thea’s life, asking real questions instead of performing small talk.
But the age gap worried her.
The distance worried her more.
“He lives in Korea,” Josie explained. “The company is there. That’s where his life is.”
“And where will your life be?” Thea asked.
Josie didn’t answer that question directly, not that night.
, with the water running so Josie wouldn’t hear.
Money was tight after that.Thea took a second job at a bakery, waking before dawn to knead dough. Then coming home to make dinner and check homework.
The bakery smelled like her hands
for years afterward. Flour worked so
She answered it six months later. When she came home with a ring on her finger and a wedding date already chosen.
Thea tried every argument she could think of.
Slow down.
Wait a year.
Make sure this is real before uprooting an entire life for it.
She brought up statistics she’d half-remembered from amagazine article about age-gap marriages. Brought up her own worries about distance, about language. About a culture neither of them fully understood. None of it landed the way she hoped.
Josie listened patiently to every argument.
Then she did exactly what she’d already decided to do.
They married in a small ceremony that spring, twenty-one years old, radiant, certain.
Thea helped her choose the dress, a simple ivory sheath Josie found on her third shopping trip. Tears in both their eyes the moment she stepped out of the fitting
room.The ceremony itself took place
in a small garden venue, forty guests, string lights. A string quartet playing softly. While Josie walked down a short grass aisle toward a man who watched her the entire way like he couldn’t quite believe his own luck.
Thea cried through most of the ceremony, torn between happiness and a fear she couldn’t fully name.
Three weeks later, Josie flew to Korea.
At the airport, they held each other for a long time. Neither one wanting to be the first to let go.
