Glad It Was You First

Chloe Reed and Liam Mercer were the only two new pupils at a one-room school in Alder Falls, Maine.

At ten they found a rusted kissing gate where two old stone walls meet, carved with initials from 1963 and visited every 14th of July by someone who never signs his name.

The gate became theirs: for secrets, promises, a first kiss and a pact to always come back. Then life pulls them to opposite ends of the earth. Chloe stays close to home with her books, and Liam goes to the frozen bottom of the planet.

After two years of crackling radio calls and silences, Liam rings at ten past seven one Saturday morning: "Meet you at the kissing gate." In the background is a woman's voice.

As Chloe walks to the gate, a sixty-year-old family secret about who carved those first initials starts to surface. She has to decide whether the first love of your life is the one you're meant to keep, or the one you're glad was first.