Not that he married Joan.
Not that I married Harold.
He regretted that when we were young, frightened people with more power than us decided our answer before we were allowed to give it.
So when he found out he was dying, Walter did something absurd.
He tracked down a seventy-three-year-old widow.
Called her.
Asked her to marry him.
And waited.
No mother answering for him.
No father threatening anyone.
No intercepted letters.
No children deciding whether it was sensible.
No fifty-four years of silence standing between the question and the answer.
Just Walter.
And me.
“Will you marry me?”
At nineteen, somebody stole that question from us.
At seventy-three, he gave it back.
That was why Walter needed the marriage.
Not to make me his widow.
Not to give me property.
Not to correct history.
History cannot be corrected.
He needed one moment in our story where nobody else got to choose.
