Chap­ter 3 begins with me, Frank Sza­tows­ki, reflect­ing on my life at the age of fifty-two. For most of my adult years, I’ve worked as a pack­age car dri­ver for UPS, a job that has kept me on the road deliv­er­ing pack­ages all across neigh­bor­hoods. These large brown trucks are a con­stant pres­ence in most areas, deliv­er­ing every­thing from online shop­ping orders to oth­er goods. After serv­ing in the army, I start­ed my career as a UPS dri­ver, and recent­ly, I received the hon­or of being induct­ed into the Cir­cle of Hon­or for dri­ving twen­ty-five years with­out an acci­dent. The phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing nature of the job, which now includes lift­ing every­thing from futons to car tires, has not deterred me, and I’ve made a com­fort­able liv­ing with a steady income, fre­quent­ly earn­ing over one hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars when fac­tor­ing in over­time.

Finan­cial­ly, I’ve man­aged to estab­lish a sta­ble life for myself. My Jeep is paid off, and my mort­gage is almost set­tled, with no cred­it card debt weigh­ing me down. I had been look­ing for­ward to an ear­ly retire­ment, believ­ing that a sol­id pen­sion and health­care ben­e­fits would pro­vide me with a com­fort­able and peace­ful future. How­ev­er, after my wife passed away, life took an unex­pect­ed turn, and com­pli­ca­tions arose with my daugh­ter, Mag­gie. The sta­bil­i­ty I had once enjoyed now seemed frag­ile, and the changes in our fam­i­ly dynam­ic have made me reeval­u­ate the future. Despite this, I hold on to the sense of secu­ri­ty I had built, even as I nav­i­gate these chal­lenges.

Recent­ly, Mag­gie reached out to share an impor­tant update—her wed­ding, which is set for July 23rd. When she first called, I was caught off guard by the news, as she excit­ed­ly spoke about her fiancé, Aidan. They had met just last Hal­loween at a cos­tume par­ty, where they dressed as char­ac­ters from The Office, and she quick­ly became infat­u­at­ed with him. I was sur­prised by the speed at which their rela­tion­ship had devel­oped, hav­ing only known each oth­er for six months. It wasn’t the kind of time­line I had expect­ed for such a sig­nif­i­cant deci­sion, and I strug­gled to rec­on­cile the quick pace with my own cau­tious nature.

Aidan, to my sur­prise, turned out to be an artist, not a house­painter as I had ini­tial­ly assumed. Mag­gie explained that he was work­ing hard to build his rep­u­ta­tion as an artist while also teach­ing at Mas­sArt, which seemed to impress her. While I want­ed to be sup­port­ive of Maggie’s rela­tion­ship, I found myself feel­ing uneasy about Aidan’s uncon­ven­tion­al career choice. I couldn’t help but press her for more details about his finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, but my ques­tions seemed to cre­ate an awk­ward ten­sion between us. I wasn’t sure if I was being too intru­sive or just look­ing for reas­sur­ance that Maggie’s future was secure with some­one who could pro­vide for her.

Mag­gie, on the oth­er hand, was more open about Aidan’s fam­i­ly back­ground, shar­ing that she had a great rela­tion­ship with his moth­er. How­ev­er, when it came to his father, she seemed hes­i­tant to dive into specifics, offer­ing only vague hints that there might be com­pli­ca­tions there. My per­sis­tence in ask­ing more about Aidan’s back­ground seemed to strain the con­ver­sa­tion, and it was clear that Mag­gie was ready to move on to a dif­fer­ent sub­ject. She sug­gest­ed we talk about every­thing fur­ther over din­ner at an Irish pub in Boston, giv­ing me the name of the place where we could meet up. Despite her eager­ness to change the sub­ject, I agreed to the din­ner, hope­ful that I might gain more insight into Aidan and their rela­tion­ship.

As our con­ver­sa­tion came to a close, I felt a deep sense of regret for the chal­lenges that had occurred in the past few years. How­ev­er, before I could ful­ly express my thoughts, Mag­gie had already hung up the phone. The abrupt end to our con­ver­sa­tion left me feel­ing unset­tled and unsure of where I stood in her life. While I was eager to recon­nect and be sup­port­ive, the increas­ing com­plex­i­ty of her rela­tion­ship with Aidan made me ques­tion how much I tru­ly under­stood about their future togeth­er. As the wed­ding day loomed, I couldn’t shake the feel­ing that there were many more ques­tions left unan­swered.