I married my high school sweetheart after 15 years together — on our first anniversary, I heard him say, “She still has no idea what I’ve been planning.”

That was the night I decided he was the person I would grow old with.

For years, nothing could shake that belief.

Not watching my friends get married one after another.

Not attending my younger cousin’s wedding when she was only twenty-four.

Not even my stepmother, Deirdre, making a joke at Thanksgiving that I had become “the permanent girlfriend.”

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