She got an answer within days. It was polite, and how are you? How nice to hear from you after all this time? I hope that you are well? Please write again, if you would like. It was like that. Here�s what his email didn�t say:I never remember to check my email, but I checked it this one last time before leaving my office for the whole summer, and here you are. I�ve never stopped thinking about you, not once in 30 years. Not through two failed marriages, not through anything. Please, please write again, please. Please.
She wrote back. He wrote back. They began to tell each other a little more, in bits and pieces. He was divorced from his first wife, who had custody of their two children in their late teens. His second wife had died, leaving him with a four year old, who was now eight. He lived less than two hours from Boston.
It was parents� weekend at the J twins� college in Boston. Sibs said she would stop by and see her new email buddy on the way home. It was September. She arrived at his house and when they saw each other they started to cry. They cried for hours and hours, and held each other, and then she had to drive home, about four hours.
The next weekend he showed up at her door around midnight and stayed until the next morning, when he had to go back and pick up his kid from a sleepover.
They were married in November. It was a small and wonderful ceremony, �in the rabbi�s study�, they call it, where you get married in the synagogue but it�s a quiet, small ceremony. It was at his synagogue, since our family doesn�t do the religious thing. They both cried through the whole thing. Four of their six children were there, the oldest of each side being at college out-of-state. I was there with my kids. My parents, not well enough to travel, were not there, but they watched the videotape afterwards.
He didn�t move to New Jersey until January, over Christmas break. Even so, he still teaches at the same college, and drives a four-hour-each-way commute three times a week when school is in session. It�s totally worth it to him to be married to the woman he�s loved all his life, since he was 18.
My sister has adopted his little boy, whose mother, it turns out, had died not long after she and The Keeper were divorced. As for The Keeper, well, he�s a quirky guy in lots of ways and can be hard to take in long doses, but he�s really as good as gold, and there�s no denying that he loves my sister, and that his only concern in the world is making her happy. As for her, it�s been hard to adjust to living with a man who actually loves and cherishes her, and only wants her to be happy, but she�s working on it. She�s never had that before.
They�ve been married for 5 years, and are never as happy as when they�re together. They would like to retire and do that full time. (Okay, he would. She�s a little more realistic about it.) They have interests in common, they enjoy each other. Her life is calm and quiet, most of the time. He is so good to her. We want her to keep him. Third time�s the charm.
