Margaret looked up at the attorney.
“What did he do?”
The lawyer gave her a quiet look.
“You should read the rest of the letter first.”
Margaret looked back down at the page.
Her hands were still shaking.
She had spent more than fifty years believing that her story with Thomas had ended when they went their separate ways as teenagers.
Then, at seventy, they had found each other again.
Now she realized something she hadn’t understood until that moment:
Thomas had been preparing for the possibility that he might not always be there to protect her.
And whatever he had arranged, he had done it before anyone else knew about it.
Margaret continued reading.
By the time she reached the final paragraph, she finally understood why the attorney had driven all the way to her little trailer.
The letter wasn’t simply a goodbye.
It was Thomas’s final promise.
The same promise he had made behind the school bleachers in 1973.
Only this time, he had found a way to keep it.
