THE LONGEST RIDE
She raises an eyebrow. "I do not know. Am I?"
265
She is, I think. And for the first time since the accident, if
only for a moment, I actually feel warm.
It's strange, I think, the way our lives turn out. Moments of cir-
cumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and
actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that
seems predestined. Such a moment occurred when I first met
Ruth. I wasn't lying when I told Ruth that I knew in that instant
we would one day be married.
Yet experience has taught me that fate is sometimes cruel and
that even a boatload of hope is sometimes not enough. For Ruth,
this became clear when Daniel entered our lives. By then, she
Was over forty and I was even older. It was another reason she
couldn't stop crying after Daniel left. Back then, social expecta-
of us knew that we were too old to
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