She told me a final piece: weeks before our wedding, a lawyer had contacted her. The man responsible had died. He’d left a short note—a plain confession without excuses—and a blurred photograph from that lost time. We opened the envelope together. One line in wavering handwriting: “I stole your life. I’m sorry.”

There are apologies that come as a kindness. This was not one of them. This was a fact arriving thirty years late.

7) Choosing Each Other—With Eyes Open