After 50 Years, I Finally Went to See My First Love at 76—Then Fate Intervened in a Way I Never Expected

in a sunhat, laughing at something just out of frame. Margaret last spring, standing among her tomato plants with one hand on her hip, looking exactly like a woman who had earned every single line on her face. I told Ellen stories in return — Margaret at seventeen, barefoot in a creek. Margaret, furious over a dented library book she swore wasn’t her continue reading …