Some of my favorite tales are about love coming along when it's least expected. I also love tales of happy endings and reunions. And tales that end with a question mark. This tale has it all!

GLENDA: Mark and I grew up together. We went to school in a small town; he was two years ahead of me. We'd always gotten along, but we never dated. He stayed in the area, got married and had two kids, while I joined the military, got married and moved 1,300 miles away.

After 21 years of marriage, my husband died, and I was a widow raising a 12-year-old. Five years later, I posted on Facebook on what would have been my husband's 60th birthday. I received a message from Mark, in which he wrote his phone number and told me to call if I needed to talk. A few days later, I received another message from him that he needed to talk, so I gave him my number, and he called me.

We talked for the first time in almost 35 years, yet our conversation seemed like we'd been in touch the whole time. His marriage was falling apart after 31 years, and I was the sympathetic ear he needed. The conversation eventually went beyond his marriage and back to our hometown and people we knew. We discovered we were way more alike than we knew, and he admitted he'd wanted to ask me out in high school but couldn't get up the nerve.

We've talked almost every day since. He'll soon be filing for divorce. Once his divorce is final, he'll fly out to see me. It's going to be a long-distance relationship for a few more years, but we've already talked about moving to be near each other as we get closer to retirement. We don't know where this is going to go, but we both know that we appreciate each other much more today than we would have if he'd asked me out all those years ago. With Mark contacting me on my husband's birthday, I felt like my husband was telling me it's time to move on.

Readers, we're going to follow this tale to see how it progresses.

Did love come along when you least expected it?

Got a problem? Send it, along with your questions and rants to [email protected]. And check out my e-book, "Dear Cheryl: Advice from Tales from the Front."