She arrived wearing a blue dress I remembered from our second year of marriage.

I had once complimented it while speaking on the phone and later worried she hadn’t heard me.

She told me she had heard and kept it because it reminded her of one rare evening when I seemed willing to notice her.

We ordered dinner and talked about ordinary things: a leaking kitchen tap, the progress of the rocking chair, a neighbor’s new puppy.

Eventually she leaned forward and asked what I would have said if I had received her letter before the wedding.