{"id":36275,"date":"2026-08-08T15:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T08:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/?p=36275"},"modified":"2026-08-08T15:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T08:46:13","slug":"after-55-years-apart-i-finally-married-my-high-school-love-but-one-quiet-confession-turned-our-reunion-into-a-story-i-never-saw-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/?p=36275","title":{"rendered":"After 55 Years Apart, I Finally Married My High School Love\u2026 But One Quiet Confession Turned Our Reunion Into a Story I Never Saw Coming."},"content":{"rendered":"

I kept my prom dress in the attic because I promised to marry the boy I loved before he left for Vietnam. Fifty-five years after the Army declared him missing, he knocked on my door. We finally married\u2014but what he confessed on our wedding night made me question my own family forever.<\/p>\n

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The oldest thing in my house wasn’t the antique piano in the living room.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Or the quilt my grandmother stitched by hand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was a simple ivory prom dress hanging inside a garment bag in the attic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Every spring, I climbed the narrow attic stairs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I unzipped the bag, and let the light fall across it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I unfolded the skirt the way you’d handle a sleeping child.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A simple ivory prom dress hanging inside a garment bag in the attic.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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In 1969, I wore that dress to my senior prom with Daniel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The boy I’d loved since we were fifteen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We fit together in the quiet way people spend a lifetime searching for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Two weeks after graduation, he was drafted to Vietnam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The night before he left, we drove to the hill overlooking our town and talked until dawn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before sunrise, he touched the sleeve of the dress I’d brought to show him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I wore that dress to my senior prom with Daniel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“Don’t let anyone else see you walk down the aisle in this,” he said, smiling. “Save it for me.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I will,” I promised.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Then the military told his parents that he had been declared missing in action.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Years became decades.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Friends married, raised children, became grandparents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I never stopped keeping my word.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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the military told his parents that he had been declared missing in action.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I believed I’d already lived through the hardest part of loving someone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I had no idea the cruelest truth was still waiting for me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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***<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One afternoon, my telephone rang while I was still brushing attic dust from my hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You’ve been up there again, haven’t you,” Margaret said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My older sister always knew.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s spring. I air it out.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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the cruelest truth was still waiting for me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s been fifty-five years.” Her voice softened into pity. “Waiting for him was admirable once, but it’s time to let the ghost go. You’re seventy-three, not eighteen.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’m fine, Margaret.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“You’ve spent your whole life waiting on a boy who isn’t coming back. Mother said the same thing before she passed. So did Daniel’s mother, God rest her.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Waiting for him was admirable once, but it’s time to let the ghost go.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel’s mother had never quite approved of me, back when there was a “back then” to speak of.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I remember what everyone said,” I told her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Then remember it,” Margaret pressed. “That house of yours is too quiet. Come live near me. I’m the only family you’ve got left.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She still lived in our parents’ old house, the one she’d inherited when Father died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I remember what everyone said,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“I like my quiet,” I said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Suit yourself. You always did.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She sighed the way she’d been sighing at me since we were girls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I only call because I worry,” she finished.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I know you do.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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We said our goodbyes and I set the phone down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I only call because I worry,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I thought about the letter I’d once mailed to Daniel’s parents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It came back unopened after their house changed hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I thought about the VA clerk who told me, year after year, that his status hadn’t changed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I thought about how I’d asked Margaret a dozen times whether anyone had ever come by our old street looking for me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Not a soul,” she always said. “Who would, after all this time?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The letter I’d once mailed to Daniel’s parents.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Downstairs, I made a cup of tea I didn’t drink and sat at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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People called my faithfulness stubbornness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To me, it was the last true thing I owned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You kept your promise,” I whispered to the empty room. “That has to count for something.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The tea went cold.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Evening came the way it always did, slow and grey and alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You kept your promise,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I was reaching to turn on the porch light when I heard it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A knock at the front door.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not the sharp rap of a delivery man or a neighbor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Slow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Uncertain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As though the person on the other side had rehearsed it a hundred times and still wasn’t ready.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A knock at the front door.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I stood very still in my hallway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Who is it?” I called.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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No answer came, only a second knock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My hand found the doorknob before my mind caught up with it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Something in my chest, some old and buried thing, began to stir.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I opened the door, and the years fell away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Who is it?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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The man on my porch had silver hair and trembling hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the eyes were the same ones I had memorized at fifteen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’ve been trying to find my way back to you,” Daniel whispered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My legs nearly gave out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I reached for the doorframe and found his hand instead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You’re real,” I said. “Tell me you’re real.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’ve been trying to find my way back to you,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’m real, Ellen. I’m here.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I thought finding Daniel would answer every question I’d carried for fifty-five years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead, it created one I never imagined asking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I brought him inside.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We sat on the sofa until the sky outside turned black.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“They told your parents you were missing,” I said. “I waited. I never stopped waiting.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’m real, Ellen. I’m here.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“So did I. I was a prisoner for years,” he answered. “When they finally let me come home, both my parents were already gone.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Gone?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“My father’s heart, while I was still over there. My mother a year after that.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He looked at his hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The house was sold,” he continued. “Strangers living in it. No one knew where you were.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I was a prisoner for years,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I pressed my fingers to my lips.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We talked until sunrise, trying to fit fifty-five lost years into a single night.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There were stories neither of us could finish without stopping to wipe away tears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There were silences that somehow said even more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before he left the next morning, Daniel took both my hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’ve already lost enough time,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We talked until sunrise<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I smiled through my tears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Then let’s not lose another day.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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***<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Three weeks later, we married in my living room, surrounded by a handful of neighbors and the two ladies from my church who had never once told me to give up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I believed our story was finally over.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel knew it was only beginning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Then let’s not lose another day.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I did not wear the 1969 dress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My body was not eighteen anymore, and neither was my heart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But I hung it on the closet door where I could see it, keeping its own quiet witness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That evening, after the last guest had gone and the house settled into stillness, Daniel sat beside me and slipped the wedding ring from his finger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He stared at it a long moment, then slid it back on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I did not wear the 1969 dress.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“There’s something I should have told you before we married,” he said quietly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Daniel, you’re frightening me.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“I wasn’t kept from you by the war.” He drew a slow, shaking breath. “I came home long before today. Someone made sure we would never find each other.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My heart began to pound.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“What are you saying?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“There’s something I should have told you before we married,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel looked away for a long moment, as if the memory still hurt to touch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“When I finally came home, I never stopped looking for you.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He swallowed hard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“And I found someone who made certain I never would. I went to the one place left,” he continued. “Your parents’ house. I thought they’d know.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Something cold moved through me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I never stopped looking for you.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“Who answered the door?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel hesitated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Margaret,” he said. “Your sister.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For the first time all evening, I stopped wondering whether Daniel still loved me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I started wondering whether I had ever known my own sister.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“What did she tell you?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Who answered the door?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“That you’d married another man. That you had a family of your own now, and it wouldn’t be right for me to come around.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“That’s a lie,” I breathed. “I never married anyone. There was never anyone but you.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I know that now.” His voice cracked. “But I didn’t then. I believed her.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I stood, then sat again, unable to hold still.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You believed her, and you left?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“But I didn’t then. I believed her.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“No,” he said quickly. “I couldn’t.\u00a0<\/a>I told her I still wanted to see you, just once. She refused to give me your address. Wouldn’t give me a phone number. Nothing.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“How many times?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I went back for years, Ellen.” He looked up at me, and his eyes were wet. “Every time I could, I stood on that porch and asked her to help me reach you. Every single time she turned me away.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I could not speak.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I went back for years, Ellen.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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The room seemed to tilt beneath me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“How did you find me at all?” I finally asked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“A neighbor,” he said. “An old woman who lived beside your parents. She’d heard me pleading with Margaret through the years. One day she followed me to my car and pressed a piece of paper into my hand. Your address. She said the truth belonged to both of us.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The old woman beside my parents’ house.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“How did you find me at all?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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She’d been a teenager living with her parents when I was a girl.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She’d moved back there after her parents died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Mrs. Halloran,” I whispered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“That was her name.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I covered my face with both hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Why would Margaret do that?” I said. “Why would my own sister keep us apart?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I covered my face with both hands.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“I don’t know,” Daniel admitted. “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“She looked me in the eye,” I said. “Over and over. She let me grow old alone.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Ellen.” He took my hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I’m sorry I believed her at all.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Don’t.” I squeezed his fingers. “You’re here. That’s all I can hold onto right now.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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***<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I did not sleep that night.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel’s confession still hung in the dark between us, and I turned it over until dawn painted the ceiling gray.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel’s confession still hung in the dark between us<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Margaret.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My sister.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The one who taught me to braid my hair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By morning, disbelief had cooled into something harder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I lay staring at nothing, letting old memories rise up and sting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel stirred beside me and reached for the water on the nightstand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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disbelief had cooled into something harder.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“You didn’t sleep,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I need to hear her say it,” I said. “I need to stand in front of Margaret and hear it come out of her mouth.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You’re sure?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’ve been sure of the wrong things for fifty-five years,” I said. “I’m sure of this.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We drove out to the old family house that afternoon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I need to hear her say it,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I brought the ivory dress and laid it, still zipped in its garment bag, across the back seat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I did not explain why.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel did not ask.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It rode behind us like a witness we were finally bringing to court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We finally stopped outside the old house.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I sat in the parked car longer than I meant to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We finally stopped outside the old house.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“We can go home,” Daniel offered gently.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“No.” My hand found the door handle. “She turned you away on this porch. She’s going to answer for it on this porch.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We walked up the steps together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My heart beat slow and heavy, not the flutter of a girl but the steadiness of a woman who had waited too long.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I stayed one pace behind Daniel, just out of sight of the door.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“She’s going to answer for it.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I wanted to hear her before she saw me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel raised his trembling hand and knocked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Footsteps.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The lock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The door swung inward, and there stood Margaret.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She saw Daniel’s face and the color drained from her own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I wanted to hear her before she saw me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“You,” she breathed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Hello, Margaret,” he said quietly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her jaw tightened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I don’t know what you want,” she said, “but I’ve told you before. My sister married. She moved on. There’s nothing here for you.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For one impossible second, I heard the exact lie that had stolen half a century from us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Is that so?” Daniel replied.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“There’s nothing here for you.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s the truth. You have to let her go.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her voice climbed, brittle and rehearsed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I heard in it every time she had sent him back down these steps into the dark.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Please,” she pressed. “Don’t make this harder. She wouldn’t want to see you.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That was the word that moved my feet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I stepped out from behind him and into the light of the doorway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s the truth. You have to let her go.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“Then ask me yourself, Margaret,” I said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her mouth opened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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No sound came out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her hand rose to the doorframe as if the house itself had tilted beneath her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Ellen,” she whispered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You told him I was married.” My voice did not shake. “You told him that on this porch, and then you told it to him again and again for years. Didn’t you.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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No sound came out.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Her eyes flicked to Daniel, then back to me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She was searching for the exit that had always been there before.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This time I stood in it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’re coming inside,” I said, and stepped over the threshold of the house where I was born. “Because you are going to look at me, and you are going to tell me why.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I already knew she’d lied.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What I still couldn’t understand was what had ever been worth fifty-five years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Because you are going to look at me, and you are going to tell me why.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Inside the parlor of our childhood home, the room where we once played as girls, Margaret backed away from me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her face had never regained its color.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Why?” I asked, following her in. “Fifty-five years. Why?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I was protecting you,” she stammered. “He might not have come back whole. I couldn’t lose you to him.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“That’s the lie you told yourself first,” I said. “But not the whole truth.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I was protecting you,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Margaret sank into Father’s old chair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her hands trembled worse than Daniel’s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“When Father died, I read the will,” she whispered. “The estate split by which of us had children. I had a family. You didn’t.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“So the more Daniel stayed lost, the more you inherited.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You would have been fine,” she cried. “I told myself you’d be fine, Ellen.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her hands trembled worse than Daniel’s.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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“You told yourself I’d thank you,” I said quietly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The room fell silent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Daniel stood in the doorway, saying nothing, his gentle eyes wet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You can keep the house,” I told her. “Keep the money. Keep every dish in that china cabinet.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I took Daniel’s hand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“What you cannot give back is the fifty-five years. And I’m done letting you keep those too.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You told yourself I’d thank you,”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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I walked out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Margaret did not follow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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***<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That night, I hung the ivory dress in my bedroom closet, out of the attic at last.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Then I joined Daniel on the porch as the sun sank low.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Any regrets?” he asked, folding his fingers into mine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Only the years,” I said. “Never the promise.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Any regrets?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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He smiled the smile I’d memorized at fifteen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The evening was warm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The hours ahead, however few, and finally, entirely ours.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I kept my prom dress in the attic because I promised to marry the boy I loved before he left for Vietnam. Fifty-five years after the Army declared him missing, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,22,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36276,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36275\/revisions\/36276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}