“Dear Tommy,
If you’re reading this, congratulations. You’ve finally done something useful with my bakery. I knew you’d worry about running it. You worry about everything, including whether your sermons are too long. They are, by the way.
But I also knew you’d find a way to help people with it. Kade and I built it together. He was a good man, and he would’ve liked you. Mostly because you’d make him look like a better cook.
I loved my life with him. And I loved finding you again. Being your wife was a gift I never expected. Don’t spend the rest of your life wishing we’d had more time. Be grateful we found each other at all.
Love isn’t something you finish giving, Tommy.
Keep going.
Your loving wife, GetMarriage Tips
Margaret.
P.S. If you ever change the name of Tommy’s Terrible Toast, I’ll haunt you.”
I folded her words gently. My eyes filled, yet this time I could smile. Since the funeral, loneliness had followed me everywhere. Standing there, I felt its grip ease a little.
Six months later, “Margaret’s Table” was providing meals twice each week. Denise remained responsible for the bakery’s operations, Wade assisted with the accounts, and I continued leading my church.
Every Saturday, I visited for coffee and Tommy’s Terrible Toast. Sometimes I brought flowers for Margaret’s picture; other times I sat quietly, remembering her laugh.
One morning, Wade joined me at my table.
“Think Mom knew we’d end up doing this together?”
I smiled. “Your mother knew more than she ever admitted.”
He gestured toward my breakfast. “Another piece of toast?”
“Of course.”
I glanced at her photograph. “After 45 years apart, she finally got me back. Then, she left me a bakery with a dish named after my greatest cooking failure.”
Wade burst out laughing, and I joined him.
Margaret and I never shared the lifetime we’d imagined when we were teenagers. But she gave me something enduring: a connection to family, a renewed purpose, and a place where people who felt alone could sit down together.
My flea-market wedding band remains on my hand. Whenever someone orders Tommy’s Terrible Toast, I smile, remembering how my first love somehow taught me to feed others decades after our prom. BookVenues
And this time, nothing gets burned.
