Beneath the photo was a message: “I’m looking for the woman in this photo. Her name is Susan, and we were together in college in the late 1970s. She was my first love. My family moved suddenly, and I lost all contact with her. I don’t know where life took her, or if she’ll ever see this.
“I’m not trying to change the past. I just need to give her something important that I’ve carried with me for more than forty years. If you recognize her, please let her know I’m looking for her.”
My throat tightened as I stared at the screen. I hadn’t heard his name in decades, but the memories rushed back instantly. Daniel had been everything back then—funny, gentle, never able to sit still. He walked me to class every day, even when it made him late to his own. We talked for hours about nothing and everything.
He wanted to be a photojournalist and always had his old Nikon slung around his neck. Then one day, just before our final semester, he disappeared. No note. No goodbye. Just gone. I heard his family had moved across the country, and all contact was lost.
Back then, I didn’t have the tools to understand what had happened. I forced myself to move on because I had to. Now, here he was again—forty-five years later—still thinking of me.
I closed the app. I couldn’t respond. Not yet. I barely slept that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the photo. I remembered teaching him how to bake banana bread, lying under the stars behind the old gym, talking about the future as if we could write it ourselves.
By morning, I was exhausted but wired. Megan noticed. “You alright, Mom?” she asked as she poured cereal for the kids. “Yeah,” I said, even though I didn’t believe it myself. “Just had a weird dream.”
But it wasn’t a dream. By mid-morning, I found the courage to go back on Facebook. I re-read the post and clicked on his profile. There he was—gray-haired now, but with the same kind face.
His page was simple: photos of hiking, a Labrador retriever named Jasper, and an older woman I assumed was his sister. I hovered over the message button, typing and deleting more drafts than I could count before finally writing: “This is Susan. I believe I’m the woman in the photo.”
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