When we were 19, my best friend and I promised that if we were both single at 60, we’d find each other — I turned 60 last Tuesday, and my old landline rang.

you use when you want the conversation to stop.

It was not true. I met him at seventeen.

Last Tuesday.

I turned sixty on Tuesday.

And that evening the landline rang in my mother’s house, which is now my house, on the table in the hall where it has been since 1979.

Almost nobody rings it. I nearly did not answer.

“Is that Lorna?”

“Yes.”

“My name’s Sam. I’m Gil Haverty’s son.”

Something went through me from the scalp down.

“My dad would like to speak to you. He hasn’t got long.”

A rustle, a hand over a receiver, a chair.

And then a voice I had not heard for forty-one years.

“Lornie.”

“You remembered.”

A small laugh, most of it breath. “I remembered every birthday.”

And then it broke.

“Lornie. There’s something I need you to know before I go.”

“What?”

“I was in love with you when we