My tea sat beside me until it went completely cold.
The letter broke my heart.
Then somehow put part of it back together.
Walter wrote that he had driven the Maple Street ice cream route for twenty years.
Those summers, he said, had been among the happiest years of his life.
He and his wife, Margaret, had never been able to have children.
They had wanted them desperately.
But it never happened.
So gradually, without ever really saying it aloud, all of us neighborhood children became something like borrowed children to them.
Walter learned our names.
Our favorite ice creams.
Which children were shy.
Which were loud.
Which ones always tried to cut in line.
And which ones always remembered to say thank you.
I was apparently one of the children who stayed in his memory.
The polite little girl who always ordered strawberry shortcake.
For Walter and Margaret, Maple Street had become the family life they had never been able to have themselves.
