Her Protector Returns

Young Carter was born into poverty. It was his childhood sweetheart June who scraped together his tuition with three years of savings from delivering newspapers and sent him off to a distant land. He made her a promise: he would call her every week. For twenty-seven years, every single letter he mailed was returned, stamped *Addressee Unknown*. Now a formidable business tycoon, Carter returns quietly to his hometown. He finds that June, having stood up to the powerful Kane family, lost her job and was blacklisted across the entire town. Yet she has clung to her embroidery craft and the last shred of her dignity. He sets aside his status, changes into plain clothes and slips into the flea market — all to draw near to her once more as a nameless stranger. When he lifts the handkerchief embroidered with blue cornflowers and murmurs softly, "Your hands still hold their magic", twenty-seven years of separation dissolve in a half-second of locked gazes.