The basic concept of this story is how the relationship between an unaging immortal and a human soulmate would develop and change throughout the life of the human.
Melissa had known her soulmate her entire life. When she was a teenager, she found out that he had been one of the nurses when her mother was giving birth to her. Thomas had been the first person to ever hold her, because the doctor had stepped out of the room, thinking it would be at least another half -hour before her mother gave birth. Depending on what kind of mood she was in, she sometimes thought the fact that he had actually delivered her was interesting, sometimes she thought it was creepy. Sometimes she thought their whole relationship was nice, sometimes she thought it was creepy.
The next time he held her, she was three years old. She had snuck away from her mother at a park, and was about to wander into traffic. Thomas had been nearby, and had caught her just before she stepped into the path of a truck. Her mother had noticed that Melissa was gone just seconds after Melissa had wandered off, but would have been five seconds too late to save her daughter. Sally immediately invited the stranger who had saved her child to dinner. Both Melissa’s mother and father thought Thomas was a very nice young man and both of them were amazed that their normally fussy and temperamental daughter was an angel whenever Tom was around.
Tom appeared to be nineteen years old, and was a freshman at a local, yet very prestigious college. He had quite a lot of money, which he said he had inherited from his parents when they died in a plane crash. During dinner, Sally and Charles discovered that Tom was in the same fraternity as one of Charles’ nephews, Melissa’s cousin. Of course this was no accident, but Melissa’s parents just chalked it up to a small world. Sally invited Tom to dinner again the next week, and the next, and it wasn’t long at all before Tom was part of the family, the son Charles had always wanted.
Tom watched Melissa for Sally and Charles one night when they had theatre tickets and their regular sitter got sick at the last minute. The next weekend the regular sitter quit, saying that four-year-old Melissa had spent the entire night crying for Tom. After that, Sally and Charles never left Melissa with anyone other than Thomas. Melissa was seven when Tom graduated from college, and as far as she was concerned, he was her big brother.