I promised I’d marry only my high school sweetheart, but he vanished for 50 years — when we finally got married, he said: “I had to disappear because of someone you know very well.”
Daniel and I had been together since high school. Then we went off to college in different states.
Before we left, Daniel took my hand and said:
“Promise me that after college, we’ll get married. WAIT FOR ME.”
Of course I promised. I loved him more than anything.
Neither of us had much money, so we couldn’t afford to travel back and forth to see each other all the time. We agreed to meet once a year at a little cafe that was roughly halfway between our colleges.
So every year, on August 15, I traveled to Ohio and waited for Daniel at that same little cafe.
For the first two years, he came.
The third year, Daniel never showed up.
Eventually, I managed to reach his parents, and they told me the police were already looking for him.
He had simply VANISHED.
Fifty years passed.
I lived my life, but some part of me was still waiting for Daniel. I never fell in love with anyone else.
And every single year on August 15, I sat in that same cafe in Ohio, hoping that somehow, someday, I’d see him again.
And then it happened.
This year, I went back to the cafe as always.
Suddenly, a man walked up to me. His hair was gray. His face was lined with wrinkles. But it was Daniel.
He told me that all those years ago, he’d been in a terrible accident, lost his memory, and had to build his life from scratch without knowing who he was or where he’d come from.
Back then, there wasn’t the kind of automated fingerprint database we have today.
Only recently had pieces of his memory started coming back. And then he remembered me. He remembered the cafe.
A few months later, we got married in a small ceremony and went to celebrate at that same cafe in Ohio.
