The Bridges of Madison County

Lying on her bed on her 67th birthday in 1987, Francesca remembers every moment of that brief time with Robert, a man for whom she’d have done anything except ruin her family. She goes downstairs and sits at the old Formica kitchen table where she and Robert spent hours together, a table Richard had since replaced but that she saved and brought back inside after his death. She lights two candles, turns on the radio, and whispers to Robert’s imagined presence.

Every day for many years after their tryst, she felt tempted to contact him, but she never does, fearing that, if she did so, she’d go to him. He sends her one package and then is silent; she knows that he knows that it’s for the best. She subscribes to National Geographic and sees the article on the covered bridges. Now and then his picture appears in the back of the magazine as one of the featured artists. Over the years, she sees him get older, and it makes her want him all the more. Somehow, she knows he was always single. In one shot of him, she notices a small medallion attached to the silver neck chain he’d worn with her.