We often don’t see who loves us until it’s too late to be an option

By David McElroy · February 28, 2026

Emily is somewhere between Birmingham and Los Angeles by now. She was leaving on a plane around 2 p.m., because she’s moving back to California to marry a guy she went to high school with. Seeing me was one of the last things she did before she left town.

I can’t remember exactly when I met Emily. Maybe 10 or 11 years ago? Something like that. She had moved here to be with a guy she had met online while she was in college. They were in the last stages of their relationship by the time I met her. She worked at a store near my house and we used to talk a lot.

We would meet at the cafe of a book store near her job from time to time. We talked about books and ideas and love and life. She was bright and funny. We texted and emailed quite a bit. But I hadn’t seen her for something like seven or eight years — until today.

She emailed me Thursday night and asked if she could see me before she left town today. I didn’t know she was moving or getting married — and I had no idea why she wanted to see me.

When I saw Emily Friday, I was struck again by how beautiful she is. As a tall, blue-eyed blonde, she’s the stereotype of the California girl she is. When she greeted me, she hugged me tightly — for long enough that I wasn’t sure she was going to let go.

She seemed oddly nervous, so I just started asking her questions about what’s been going on for her and why she was moving. She wasn’t interested in telling me about the man to whom she’s engaged. It seemed odd.

Finally, she said, “I have something for you.”

She reached into her purse and pulled something out, but she kept it in her hand, so I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. It just looked like something small and silver-colored.

She told me there was something she had wanted to tell me. She said she hadn’t planned to ever tell me, but as she was sorting through the last of her things this week before moving, she came across something that she knew she needed to get rid of — and she had decided to give it to me as a memento and a confession.

Emily explained that she had fallen in love with me back when I used to talk with her a lot. She said she tried to hint around at her interest, but she couldn’t bring herself to be more open about it. She said it was right after she and the other guy had broken up, so she was afraid I would think it was just emotion born of wanting a rebound.

On a whim, she bought a little locket at Target — a cheap trinket designed for a little girl, no doubt — and she put a picture of me in there. (It was an old profile picture from Facebook.) She said she couldn’t talk to anybody about how she felt about me, but in that period when we were starting to talk more — and she was getting over the ugly breakup with the old boyfriend — she often talked to “me” in the locket for hours.

And now, she said, she was leaving to get married, so it wasn’t a thing she needed to keep anymore. How would she explain such a thing if her husband-to-be ran across it? But instead of throwing it away, she was leaving it with me.

I asked her why she had never told me of her interest. She reminded me that I had fallen in love with someone else right as she and I had been talking more and more, so she didn’t want to compete with someone I seemed to be so crazy about. And then I had moved to another part of town and we drifted away from seeing each other.

As she spoke, I felt a strange tightening in my chest — not because I wished we had ended up together, but because I realized how easily I can miss what’s quietly offered to me.

There wasn’t much I could say. I thanked her for sharing her secret with me. I told her — honestly — that it was very flattering to have a woman like her think I was worth pursuing. And I told her I hope she will be happy as she moves back home and marries someone she knew before college — someone she had reconnected with on a trip home.

“I hope so, too,” she said quietly, but there was no joy or hope in her voice. I thought it was best if I didn’t ask more.

And then we parted for the last time.

Emily is somewhere in the sky over Arkansas or Texas by now. I doubt I’ll ever see her again. And I’m left wondering again why we can be so blind — until it’s too late to matter — to someone who really wants to give us love.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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