The streetlamps were just flickering on, casting long, pale shadows across my small yard. He reached into his pocket, but his hand came out empty.
“I wanted to have the ring tonight,” he said, his voice dropping to a soft murmur. “The real one. The one I promised you behind the bleachers after the sectional game.”
“We were seventeen, Garrett,” I said. “A promise like that does not keep its shape for fifty-three years.”
“This one did,” he said, turning to look at me. “I am still working on getting the perfect one. There are some details to clear up first with the family accounts, but it is coming.”
He leaned closer, his eyes reflecting the yellow light from my porch lamp. He took a breath, his chest rising slowly under his wool jacket.
“Will you marry me, Eleanor?” he asked.
The quiet of the neighborhood seemed to swell around us, the distant hum of the highway the only sound in the dusk. I looked at his hands, older now with prominent veins and a slight stiffness in the knuckles, but still the hands of the boy who had walked me home through the autumn rains.
