I was married to my first husband, Raymond, for fifty years before cancer took him. The loneliness after was a physical thing, like a coat made of cold that I couldn’t take off. I did not expect to ever feel warm again.
Then I met Harold at the senior center, over of all things a jigsaw puzzle nobody else wanted to finish. He was a retired postman, gentle and funny, and slowly the cold coat loosened. When he asked me to marry him, I was seventy-four years old and I said yes without a moment’s doubt.
My children were cautious but kind about it. My grandchildren were not. They were in their twenties, old enough to have opinions and young enough to be sure of them. Word got back to me fast: Grandma’s new husband is after her money. He’s going to take everything that should be ours.
The calls stopped. The Sunday visits stopped. My granddaughter Katie, who I had practically raised, walked right past me at a family gathering as if I were a stranger. It broke something in me, but I held my head up. I knew Harold, and they did not.
For a full year we lived quietly, Harold and I, mostly cut off from the grandchildren I loved. I never once heard him say a bitter word about them. Then one afternoon Katie called me, out of the blue, and her voice was shaking so hard I could barely understand her.
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