"And they lived happily ever after."
"Tell me another one, Grandma!"
Jennie sighed. Her youngest granddaughter was just at the age when little girls have an insatiable appetite for love stories. Well, maybe there were some little girls who never outgrew that particular trait.
"Let's see." Jennie said. "Did I ever tell you the one about the girl whose family forgot her sixteenth birthday?"
"You mean Sixteen Candles?" Her granddaughter rolled her eyes with impatience. "Yes, Grandma. I've seen it a hundred times. I want to hear a real story!"
"A real story?"
"Were you ever in love, Grandma?"
Jennie let out a gasp of indignation. "What do you mean, was I? Your grandpops is right in the next room!"
"You were in love with Grandpops? But she's so old!"
"You know, she wasn't always so old," Jennie chuckled. "There was a time when women in every single country on the planet were wildly in love with your grandpops."
The little girl crinkled her forehead in confusion. "Why?"
"Why what?" Lisa asked as she walked into the room.
"Your granddaughter wants to hear a love story," Jennie replied. She followed Lisa with her eyes as Lisa sank down beside her with a groan on the well-worn living room couch.
"Love story, huh? I might know a few of those."
"Tell me the story of when you asked Grandma to marry you!"
Lisa looked at her wife with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "When I asked your grandmother to marry me?" she said. "Do you remember?"
Jennie grinned back at Lisa. "Which time?"
"That's true." Lisa confirmed. She pulled her eyes away from Jennie's face and nodded at her granddaughter seriously. "Just one marriage proposal wasn't good enough. Not for your grandmother. No, I seem to recall at least..." Lisa looked down and started counting on her fingers. "How many was it?"
Jennie pressed one hand to her cheek as she watched Lisa. "You remember very well." she said.
Lisa shook her head at Jennie. "I lost count. But now the first one - that was a thing of beauty. That was the stuff they pay the screenwriters big bucks for in Hollywood. You know there's a word for the kind of woman who would turn down a proposal like that one."
"There was no ring." Jennie said.
"No ring." Lisa closed her eyes for a moment and sighed.
"Tell the story!" her granddaughter demanded, bouncing up and down with excitement.
"Well, let's see..." Lisa began. "It was a Sunday afternoon, as I recall..."
"You really want to hear this?" Jennie gave her granddaughter a sceptical look. "But you already know the ending."
"Oh, Grandma! Don't be dumb. It always ends the same anyway."
"Yeah, Grandma. Don't be dumb," Lisa said, taking Jennie's hand in hers. Jennie looked up to see Lisa's eyes dancing with laughter, and she felt her heart constrict as she remembered a different time when Lisa held her hand - an afternoon 40 years ago, when the look in Lisa's eyes had been a different one entirely.
"Now, where was I?" Lisa said.
"It was a Sunday afternoon," the little girl prompted.
"Raining cats and dogs..." Jennie added with a wistful smile. She squeezed Lisa's hand as she smiled back.
