…a cemetery in Ireland. Remains of Mrs. Carol Hayes, died December 1994.”
I’m Carol Hayes. But I was born in 1968 and had never been to Ireland.
My husband, Peter, finally answered his phone that evening. When I told him where I was, he went quiet for a long time. Then he drove to the cemetery and found me standing in front of the headstone.
“Her name was Carol too,” he said. “Carol Hayes. My first wife.”
I knew Peter had been married briefly in his twenties. He’d told me once, on our second date, that she had died, and that it hurt too much to talk about. I never pushed.
They’d married in Dublin in 1993. A year later, she was killed by a drunk driver on their first anniversary weekend. Peter came home to America with nothing but a suitcase. She was buried in Ireland because he couldn’t afford to bring her back.
For thirty-two years, he’d gone “fishing” or on a “business trip” every December, on the anniversary of her death. He’d never once told me why.
Last year, he’d finally saved enough to bring her home and bury her beside his own future plot. The engraver had made a terrible mistake: they’d pulled the birthday from Peter’s account, which listed me as his wife, instead of from her records. The words “TOGETHER FOREVER” were meant for the two of them.
“And the anniversary trip?” I asked.
“I was going to tell you that weekend,” he said. “I wanted you to come with me. I wanted you to meet her, in a way.”
The cemetery corrected the headstone. Her real birthday is on it now, along with a line Peter chose: “Loved twice. Never forgotten.”
On the anniversary, I went with him. We laid flowers on her grave together. Then we went to dinner, just the two of us, and he finally told me about her: how she laughed, how she sang badly in the car. I’m not jealous of her. I’m grateful someone loved him before I did, and taught him how.
