It was raining when Mark offered to share his umbrella with Becca nine years ago. He says he didn’t have any other motivation, but Becca smiled Friday night when they told me the story.
“I don’t know what he was really thinking,” she said, “but I’m glad he took the chance.”
I met Mark and Becca — along with their two young children — at a restaurant. Their two daughters attracted my attention first. Their animated games of make-believe made me smile and I was soon chatting with their parents.
They live in Portland, Ore., now, but Birmingham will always be special to them. It was a twist of fate — like something out of a romantic movie — that brought them together in the rain one evening nine years ago.
Becca was a 26-year-old lawyer at her father’s Philadelphia law firm. She’s an only child and her dad had always wanted her to take over his law practice one day. He had planned her life. He sent her to Yale for her undergraduate degree and Georgetown for law school. She had been working at the firm for a bit more than a year, but her dad told anybody who would listen that she would eventually take over for him.
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