We had been together since sophomore year. We had survived awkward first dates, terrible haircuts, jealous classmates, college applications, and countless jokes about how we were an “odd, mismatched couple.”
Michael was quiet where I was outspoken.
I loved making plans. He preferred to see where life took him.
I was always worrying about tomorrow.
He was the kind of person who could sit on a park bench for an hour and somehow make doing absolutely nothing feel like an adventure.
But we loved each other.
At least, I thought we did.
Our senior prom was supposed to be the beginning of our next chapter.
Instead, it became the night that ended my old life.
And for the next forty-one years, I never danced with another man.
I never married.
I never even came close.
People assumed I was being dramatic when I said I was waiting for Michael.
Eventually, they stopped asking.
Some thought I was foolish.
Others thought I was secretly afraid of commitment.
My family tried to set me up several times.
I always declined.
Because somewhere deep inside, I had never accepted that Michael was gone.
He hadn’t died.
At least, nobody had ever proved that he had.
He had simply disappeared.
And last week, a young girl walked up to me in a grocery store parking lot and handed me something that made my entire body go cold.
A boutonniere.
An old, dried, carefully preserved prom boutonniere.
Michael’s prom boutonniere.
And what the girl said next changed everything I thought I knew about the night he vanished.
The Night Everything Changed
Our prom was held at the old Lakeside Hotel.
