S. was in love with her cousin. Well, sort of. What I mean is that she actually WAS in love with him, but he was only sort of her cousin because S. was adopted. And she had only really met J. a few times during her whole childhood. The first time they met as “adults” though (her a very immature 24, not long out of school and back to living with her folks, and him a very mature 29, 10 years in the Army, already a father and survivor of two marriages) it was like… YOWZAH!!!

S. would claim for the rest of her life that the cliché of the “skies opening and angels singing” is completely true and no one before or since has… it’s hard to even find the right word… resonated. I guess, with her and made her feel that she was so absolutely precisely where she was meant to be that day. It was a total mindfuck. Some kind of sick cosmic joke and she never got over it. Over HIM. Never. Like her own special Mrs. Havisham story. Anyway, that’s kind of how she felt over 20 years later. Ugh.