Jimmy was sitting beside a window wearing a cardigan when Wendell brought me into his room. He was thinner than the young man I remembered, and his left hand remained curled from the strokes. For several seconds, I couldn’t make myself move. Then I quietly said his name. Jimmy turned toward me and stared as though he were looking at a ghost. Slowly, the same crooked smile I’d loved at the Dairy Queen appeared on his face. “Ruthie,” he whispered. “They told me you were gone.”

There was nothing either of us could do about the decades stolen from us. My mother was gone, and anger couldn’t return the engagement Jimmy never got to offer or the life we might have shared. But we still had whatever time remained. I visit Riverview Manor every afternoon now. Jimmy holds that old locket while we talk, sometimes remembering 1982 more clearly than what happened yesterday. I tell him stories he’s forgotten, and sometimes he tells me ones I’ve forgotten too. Wendell visits often, carrying guilt neither Jimmy nor I ask him to carry anymore. We lost most of a lifetime because other people decided what truth we could handle. But when Jimmy reaches for my hand, I don’t think about the years we lost. Neither of us is leaving now.