Remember how I was working at that little restaurant? Well, for a couple of years I’d been waiting on my future in-laws without even knowing it. We’ll just call them Mr. and Mrs. D for our purposes here today.
They were an odd couple. Mrs. D was a beautiful blonde and friendly as can be, and Mr. D was quiet, reserved, and hard to read. I really enjoyed waiting on them, though, and I found it amusing when Mrs. D would occasionally mention their son in California and how perfect he and I would be for each other. She mentioned this to me on at least two or three occasions, but I always laughed and just politely reminded her that I had a boyfriend. I came to find out later that, in actuality, Mrs. D talked a whole lot more about Matthew and I one day meeting than I ever knew at the time; Mr. D now says he had to hear about it every single time they came to the restaurant, and Matthew, when he was in town, would always go to eat there and would hear about me then, too. But for some reason, I was never working when Matthew happened to stop in with his parents, and our paths never crossed.
But then one day, on January 19, 2009, our paths DID cross. And to make it all the more strange, I wasn’t even working that day—the encounter was, TRULY, by chance.
Little did I know when I woke up that morning, Martin Luther King Day and a university holiday, that my life was about to be turned upside down.
