Alone now, the widow reads considerably. She used to underline favorite passages to share with her husband. Now, in a notebook, she stores quotations like this one from Elizabeth Jolley's Cabin Fever: "I experience again the deep-felt wish to be part of a married couple, to sit by the fire in winter with the man who is my husband. So intense is this wish that if I write the word husband on a piece of paper, my eyes fill with tears."

    Why are these lines so painful?

    We begin with a worn wedding album. In the first picture, the bride and groom are facing, with uncertain smiles, a church filled with relatives and friends. The bride did not wear glasses that day, so everything was a blur of candlelight and faces.

    They walked to the back of the church and stood at the door as their guests filed past. From colleagues and old schoolmates came cheerful good wishes clothed in friendly jokes. Some relatives, however, were not pleased. One sat in a car, crying; another stood surrounded by sympathizers offering pity. Both these women — mothers of the bride and groom — would have insisted they wanted only the best for their children but they defined "the best" as staying home to help support the family.

    The last person to approach the couple was a short, elderly woman who smiled as she congratulated them — not by name but as "wife" and "husband".

    "I'm Aunt Esther Gubbins," she said. "I'm here to tell you you are going to live a good life and be happy. You will work hard and love each other."

    Then quickly, for such a short, portly, elderly person, she disappeared.

    Soon they departed, in a borrowed car. With money loaned by the groom's brother, they could afford a honeymoon at a state-park lodge. Sitting before a great oak fire, they recalled the events of the day, especially the strange message conveyed by Aunt Esther Gubbins.

    "Is she your mother's sister or your father's?" asked the wife.

    "Isn't she your aunt?" the husband responded. "I never saw her before."

    They wondered. Had she come to the wrong church or at the wrong time, mistaking them for another couple? Or was she just an old woman who liked weddings and scanned for announcements in church bulletins?

    With the passage of time and the birth of grandchildren, their mothers accepted their marriage. One made piles of clothes for the children; the other knitted hats, sweaters and gloves.

    The couple's life together was very ordinary. Peculiarly, neither ever asked "Whose job is this?" or asserted "That is not my responsibility!" Both acted to fill their needs as time and opportunity allowed.

    Arriving from work, he might announce, "Wife, I am home!" And she, restraining the desire to complain about housework, would respond, "Husband, I am glad!"

    Occasionally, usually around their anniversary, they would bring up the old curiosity regarding Aunt Esther Gubbins. He would insist the elderly woman did attend their wedding accidentally. But she knew "Aunt Esther" was on some heavenly mission.

    Widowed now, the wife wonders what she would save from their old home if it were to catch fire: Her mother's ring? Pictures of her husband? The $47 hidden in the sugar bowl?

    No, it would be the worn, fading envelope she kept for so long. She knows exactly where it can be found: under a pile of napkins.

    One evening her husband had fallen asleep while reading a spy novel. She wrote a note on the envelope and left it on his book: "Husband, I have gone next door to help Mrs. Norton with her sick children."

    The next morning she saw he had written below her message: "Wife, I missed you. You thought I was asleep, but I was just resting my eyes and thinking about that peculiar woman who talked to us in church a long time ago. It has always seemed to me that she was the wrong shape for a heavenly messenger. Anyway, it's time to stop wondering whether she came from heaven or a nearby town. What matters is this: whoever she was, Aunt Esther Gubbins was right."

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