He married his childhood sweetheart. He married her twice, actually. They’d been engaged since that day on the beach when he was in sixth grade, but no one knew it but them. He married her the first time the day after he graduated from high school, and they had to lie about their age and the state they lived in in order to do it. It had no legal standing, and neither one of them considered it any more (or any less) than a morally binding lifetime commitment to each other. When they got home, when they got back into the state they really lived in, she went home to her parents’ house next door, and finished school, and he got a job, and went to make a home for her. They were married, but no one knew it but them.
