For the next two years, we rebuilt what time had taken.
Or that was what I believed.
He told me his family had moved to Oregon. His father had struggled to keep a job.
His parents had divorced.
He said he had spent years thinking about our childhood street and the promise he had made beside that moving truck.
“Did you really remember it?” I asked during our first dinner.
“Every word.”
“Why didn’t you contact me?”
He looked down.
“I was afraid you had forgotten me.”
I reached across the table.
“I didn’t.”
We spoke about our childhood.
He remembered our blanket fort behind my father’s shed.
He remembered the day I pushed him into a pond because he called me a chicken.
He remembered that I hated grape candy and loved thunderstorms.
Every detail reminded me of how much fun we used to have together.
Sometimes our details didn’t match as we tried remembering things that happened over two decades ago.
He mixed up the colors of our bicycles.
Once, I mentioned the glass jars we used to eat ice cream in, and he stared at me for half a second too long.
Then he said, “Ooh, I remember them. That was fun.”
I accepted his forgetfulness.
Twenty years can change memory.
That was what I told myself.
He was gentle with me, patient, and funny.
He never complained when I worked late at the bakery.
He learned to make coffee the way I liked it.
He called my mother every Sunday and listened to stories she had already told him twice.
Everyone loved Leo, especially my mother.
