The old booths were replaced.

But I always asked for the same table.

The one by the window.

I would sit there for an hour.

Sometimes two.

And every year, I told myself the same thing:

"This is the last time."

Then August 15 came again.

And I went back.

The Man Who Walked Through the Door

This year was different.

I was seventy years old.

I had already accepted that Daniel was probably gone forever.

I'd been sitting at the café for about twenty minutes when the bell above the door rang.

I looked up.

An elderly man walked inside.

He had silver-gray hair.

Deep lines across his face.

A dark coat.

He walked slowly, carefully.

He looked around the room.

Then his eyes stopped on me.

He froze.

My heart began pounding.

The man took one step forward.

Then another.

He came toward my table.

I couldn't breathe.

He stopped in front of me.

"Is this seat taken?"

His voice was older.

Deeper.

But I knew it.

I knew it before my mind could accept it.

"Daniel?"

He smiled.

And suddenly, fifty years disappeared.

I was seventeen again.

Standing outside my parents' house.

Listening to him say:

Wait for me.

I stood up so quickly that my chair nearly fell over.

He reached for my hand.

"I came back."

I started crying.

He cried too.

Neither of us spoke for several minutes.

The café seemed to disappear around us.

There was only us.

Two teenagers who had somehow survived fifty years apart.

The Story He Told Me

Daniel explained that he had been in an accident shortly after leaving college.

He said he had suffered a severe head injury.

He woke up in a hospital without knowing who he was.

No identification.

No clear memories.

No family contacts.

Nothing.

According to him, doctors believed he had suffered significant amnesia.

He remembered fragments.

A woman's face.

A red dress.

A song.

A café.

But nothing that connected those pieces together.

He said that because of the era, there were limited ways to establish his identity.

No widespread automated fingerprint databases.

No smartphones.

No national system that could instantly connect an unidentified person to every missing-person report.

Eventually, he was placed under care.

He rebuilt his life.

He got a new name.

He worked.

He married.

He had a daughter.

Then his wife died.

Years later, fragments of memory began returning.

At first, he remembered my face.