They were an older couple, married nearly nineteen years. Four kids between the ages of four and sixteen. Their life was ruled by jobs and bills and schedules, they’d seen the world and settled down. Parents, spouses, properly functioning middle-aged adults.

She was four years older, having snatched him from his twenty-second year, but together they had been since then, traveling, working, raising their kids.

When their first daughter was born, she was twenty-eight to his twenty-four.

When that daughter, at sixteen, brought home what she believed to be the love of her life, he was eighteen. Her father was forty, her mother forty-four.

They were a young couple, not yet living together. No kids, just their love and two small jobs, exit tickets, against the world. Their lives consisted of fighting to get a start on their lives together, to move out and to move in, perhaps to start a long engagement. They were fighting to see the world.

He was two years older, and some may say that he stole her teens and twenties, but she knows that he gave her those years. Some may say that he gave away his young-adulthood, but he knows he spent it well.

So at the end of the night, the old man gave him no hell, and gave instead his eldest daughter.