Before my Nana met my grandpa, she dated a man named Newcomb Mott. He was a textbook salesman. “He was a bit odd,” Nana said. He always wore a trench coat. On one of their dates, he took her to see a mime show. Not long after, he left the city to travel through Europe, which was just fine by Nana.
While Newcomb was hiking in Finland, he crossed into the USSR and was promptly captured. It was the Cold War, so it was decided that he was an American spy. He was sentenced to prison in a Siberian gulag. On the long train ride to Siberia, he had time to think through his predicament. After some thought, he attempted to escape, at which point he was immediately killed. The Soviets claimed it was a suicide. He was shot 68 times.
Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, my Nana met my Ed, a firefighter from a good Irish family. They got married, had kids, moved to the suburbs, and retired to New Hampshire, where they live on a lake.