I found her reading on the sofa. “I’d like to buy you a drink.” Her eyes widened, and she smiled mischievously at the thought of doing something ‘bad,’ like a glass of wine in the middle of the afternoon.

We sat at a low table by the window in Compadres on El Camino in Palo Alto, she with her Chardy, me with my margarita, a generous basket of nacho chips between us. “I want us to leave,” I said, having planned my speech in the ten minutes it had taken us to walk there from our home. “Let’s rent out our place and take off. I want us to go without knowing where we’re going, what we’ll be doing, how long we’ll be gone. Just leave. I’m dying of boredom here. Let’s do it. Soon.”

She looked me in the eye for all of five seconds. Then, “Okay.”

I’d heard that response before. Twenty-one years earlier, almost to the day. I’d just returned from my year-long mid-career walkabout, traveling around the world. We were sitting by our pup tent in a meadow in Maine, on Mount Desert Island.

“So now what do we do?” She asked. “You’re here, but your life is in Canada. You don’t even have a green card.”

“I don’t know. I guess if I don’t figure out what to do in a month, I’ll head back to Vancouver.”

“What about us? You’ve been away for nearly a year, and three days after arriving here, you’re talking about leaving again.”

I felt myself bristle. “I didn’t leave. We both left! I went roaming, but then followed you to Boston.”

“I don’t like how we’re talking.”

“Me either.”

A long pause. The tall yellow grass tossed and tousled in the breeze.

Someone spoke. Me. “We could always get married, I guess.”

“Are you serious?”

“I think so.”

“I feel nervous,” she said.

“So do I.”

She glanced around, then back to me. “It’s on the tip of my tongue,” she said, touching it. “I can’t quite get it out.”

“Say it. Please.”

“Okay.”

Now here it was again, the same tone, but this time with no hesitation, no objection, not a consideration in sight: “Okay.” She was looking at me with wild, excited eyes.

Not what I’d expected. That’s what I love about her. After all these years, she can still surprise me.

The bride wore black. August 28, 1978. (Arabella Meadows-Rogers)