I had spent much of my life ignoring things that made me uncomfortable.

Then, one afternoon, Thomas asked me to sit beside him.

His hand found mine on top of the blanket.

It felt light and cold.

“Nancy,” he said, “I feel terrible asking this.”

Our conversations had grown more affectionate with each passing day, but the seriousness in his voice frightened me.

“Ask me.”

“I have loved you for my entire life.”

Part 2:

My breath caught.

“I know I don’t have much time left,” he continued. “But there is one thing I always dreamed of doing.”

He looked directly into my eyes.

“Will you marry me?”

For several seconds, the room disappeared.

Fifty-six years of questions, regrets, and imagined possibilities seemed to gather between us.

Part of me heard Raymond’s voice warning me that I was being foolish.

But another voice—the voice of the seventeen-year-old girl I had once been—told me not to walk away again.

Thomas had advanced cancer.

He knew he was dying.

This was his final wish.