And less than an hour earlier, I had been sitting alone in my childhood home when the old landline rang.
Now I was about to walk into a room and see the person I had once believed would always be part of my life.
I finally opened the door.
Jeffrey lay in the hospital bed.
He was thinner than I remembered.
His hair was white now, and time had changed almost every feature of his face.
But somehow, he was still unmistakably Jeffrey.
His eyes found mine immediately.
“Ruthie.”
My throat tightened.
Then I noticed something sitting on the chair beside his bed.
A wooden box.
The second I recognized it, I stopped breathing.
It had belonged to my father.
And I hadn’t seen it since the year he died.
—
Jeffrey and I became best friends when we were seventeen.
Not boyfriend and girlfriend.
Just Jeffrey and Ruth.
At least, that was what we always told people.
