For our first date, we went to her recently deceased aunt’s house to clear the furniture. Hardly an auspicious start.
From the photos that we packed into bags-for-life, she looked remarkably similar to her aunt. She spent the day admiring her aunt’s single-mindedness, her style and unwillingness to put up with nonsense from the men in her life. She lived her life on her terms, and now she was gone.
The more stories I heard, the more remnants of a single life were packed away, the more the parallels closed in. A vision of fate, I had no place here.