After Forty-Five Years Apart, a Pastor Married His High School Sweetheart

I got up and laid her hand gently back on the cotton blanket.

“I’ll talk to the hospital administrator before noon,” I said.

“Don’t ask an administrator for permission,” Margaret said.

“You’re the pastor.

You perform the ceremony.”

By three that afternoon, I was sitting in the church boardroom on the second floor of the parish hall.

A glass bottle of lemon oil stood on the table beside a folded yellow rag, and I worked the cloth over the dark mahogany in slow, deliberate strokes.

Arthur sat at the far end of the long conference table, his heavy gold signet ring catching the harsh fluorescent light as his fountain pen scratched across a sheet of official letterhead.