I started pouring coffee at the senior center every Tuesday because the house felt too quiet. My husband had been gone for five years, and the kids were grown and busy in Nashville. I figured the company would do me good.

It was just a way to kill time. I never expected to see a ghost.

A new man joined our table in early March. His name was Lloyd. He had a way of sitting that made him seem like he was always waiting for something to happen. He watched me whenever I walked by with the pot. It made my skin crawl a little, to be honest.

Finally, I had enough. I walked over and set the coffee pot down on the table with a firm click.

“Is there something you need?” I asked him.

He didn’t look away. He just stared right at me. “You lived on Beech Street,” he said. “Summer of 1969.”

The coffee pot nearly slipped from my hand. I gripped the handle so hard my knuckles turned white. My brain stopped working for a solid ten seconds.

Beech Street was a lifetime ago. It was a dusty road with oak trees and a dime store where I used to buy my penny candy. I hadn’t thought about that summer in decades. I certainly didn’t expect a man in a cardigan sweater to bring it up in the middle of a senior center.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“I’m Lloyd,” he said. “You walked me home from the store every day for three weeks.”

I stared at him. I looked for the boy I knew back then. I saw the same jawline, even if the skin was a little looser now. It was him. It was the boy who used to draw pictures of cars in the margins of my math homework.

We had written letters for a year after his family moved to Ohio. Then, they just stopped. I had waited for months, checking the mailbox every single day until the paint began to peel on the box. I finally convinced myself he had met someone else. I moved on. I got married. I had a life.

He reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out a yellowed, fragile envelope. It had my handwriting on it.

“My mother hid your last letter,” he said. “I found it after she passed away last winter.”

I felt the room tilt. I sat down in the chair across from him. I didn’t care about the other seniors or the coffee or the fact that I was supposed to be working. Everything else just vanished.

“She told me you never wrote back,” he said. “She told me you went to college and forgot all about the boy on Beech Street.”

“She told me you moved on,” I replied. My voice sounded thin, like it was coming from someone else. “She said you didn’t want to be tied down to a girl from a small town.”