Page eventually introduced Allan to Robert, and Allan worked to forge his own relationship with Robert, writing him an e-mail every day and taking him to breakfast at IHOP, Robert’s favorite, whenever he was in town. Allan felt uneasy at first, guilty about befriending a man with limited cognition while starting up a romance with his wife.

Page tiptoed into the subject of dating with Robert, telling him that she and Allan were beginning to be more than just friends, and asking if he understood and was comfortable with that. Robert told her it was fine. “He’s a really nice guy,” Page says he told her.

Allan started visiting every other weekend. He and Page would cook together and go for runs. They would take the girls hiking or on day trips. Allan put up a swing in the back yard and played soccer with the girls.

Page felt 30 again but was racked with guilt. “I believed my vows so strongly that they just kept ringing in my ears.”

She consulted her minister, who told her that by continuing to take care of Robert, she was still honoring those vows.

In March 2010, Allan and Page and the girls went skiing at the Homestead Resort in southwestern Virginia. Page watched from behind as Allan helped her daughters navigate the slopes, skiing with one girl on either side of him. “It hit me like a thunderbolt,” she says. “I’m watching him with these two girls, and I thought, here’s an unusual man, and a patient man, and a kind man, and a very loving man — and I felt my heart just lift.”

They started having whimsical talks about marriage, but merging families seemed too complicated. Allan, now divorced, couldn’t leave St. Louis, where he had joint custody of his three youngest sons, and was about to become president of Reliance Bank. And Page’s support system — her parents, her sister and brother — were all in Richmond.

And there was Robert. Marriage would require divorce. Page couldn’t imagine that. But another thought eased her mind: “I knew if something happened to me, Allan would take care of Robert, and the girls, of course.”

In June, Allan proposed. Page said yes, though she still couldn’t wrap her head around how it would work. Eventually, they came up with a plan. Page and the girls would move to St. Louis. And Robert would come with them…
* * *

Page says she was a nervous wreck on the June 2010 morning when Will brought Robert to the house. She’d gone over the conversation dozens of times in her head but still couldn’t imagine saying the words out loud.

Finally, she started: “I’ll always love you, and we’ll always take care of you.”

“I know that,” Robert said.

She took a sip of coffee. “You know that Allan and I have been seeing each other, and we have a relationship and we love each other, and he’s asked me to marry him.”

Robert responded immediately: “You should marry him. He’s a good guy.” Then he asked what would happen to him.

Page explained that they would all move to St. Louis, where she’d already found a Sunrise facility close to their home. Their family would be the same, she told him, only bigger.

A week later was Father’s Day, and Nell drew a picture, titled “my family,” with all nine of them, including her four stepbrothers-to-be: “Allan, Dad, Mom, Hopie, Me, Harrison, Peter, Chris, Charlie.”

“If the youngest person in the family can grasp that this is what the picture looks like,” Page thought to herself, “then we’ll be okay.”

Page never used the word “divorce” with Robert, but that would have to be the next step. She hired a lawyer for herself and another one for Robert, and asked Will to represent Robert along with a guardian ad litem appointed by the court. The divorce was final in early 2011. Page wanted to remain Robert’s legal guardian, as she had been since his injury, and no one objected. Will signed for Robert.

On the morning of March 26 last year, Allan and his youngest son, Charles, took Robert to breakfast at IHOP. That evening, Page and Allan married in a small 19th-century chapel at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Richmond in front of about 100 people, including Robert’s father and stepmother, and his brother Will and his wife. But not Robert.

“I just could not have done that,” Page says. “It broke my heart to not be married to Robert anymore, in spite of all the good that was going to happen.”

As Allan held Page’s hands, he promised to always love her and her daughters. He turned to Hope and Nell, who were their mom’s attendants, and smiled. Then he looked back at Page: “And I promise to always help you provide compassionate care for Robert.”

The words seemed to unleash the emotions of the day. Will Melton, an assistant director with the Marine Corps, said he and his father — and everyone in the church including the minister — were moved to tears. “Allan’s vows were so touching,” Will said. “It was very uplifting in that regard — but also kinda sad.”

Page thinks Robert accepted the new expanded family. “On some level, it didn’t matter to him,” Page says.

At an appointment to switch the battery in his defibrillator before he left Richmond, Robert, with Page by his side, was asked if he was married or single. “Single. … My lady’s married to someone else now,” he said.

Page looked at Robert. “Are you okay with that?”

“I’m fine with that,” he said, cheerful as ever, Page says.

Page says there have been a thousand moments like that, when she has felt almost apologetic and wanted to explain.

“In a way, I feel married to Robert forever,” she said a few days before leaving for St. Louis. “It’s not a traditional marriage. It’s not the marriage we signed up for. But I feel like there’s a connection there that never ends.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

…Robert seems to be adapting best of all, Page and Allan both say. He takes part in everything from the walking club to the puzzle group at Sunrise. “I’ve got the calendar of today’s activities, and I have done the whole nine yards,” he tells Page one afternoon. “Aren’t you proud of me, darlin’?”

Page still sees him several times a week, taking him out or to the house, bringing him iced tea for his refrigerator or books of word searches.

Allan writes him e-mails every day and takes him to breakfast every Wednesday…

* * * * * * * *

Zasler says Robert’s case has been unusual in that he has continued to improve years after his injury — a consequence, the doctor thinks, of Robert’s strength, medications and rehabilitation, and Page’s devotion. “A lot of times, family members pack up the bag and run the other way,” he says. “Page’s support for Robert kind of exemplifies what true love is all about.”

For years after Robert’s injury, Page was sustained by the notion that she would see him again after she died, the man who turned her head in the press room and loved poetry and handed her their newborn babies. “We’d be able to talk through all this stuff, and I’d be able to say, ‘Well, I hope it worked out okay, that the decisions were the right ones, and that you were happy.’ ”