Even after four years.
“Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Everyone says that.”
“I know.”
She waited.
I found myself continuing anyway.
“She was thirty-three.”
“Our daughter was four.”
“She fought two years.”
“The last six months were…”
I stopped.
The woman did not finish the sentence for me.
That mattered.
“She made me promise I'd date again.”
The woman almost smiled.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Technically Marino’s—”
“Disaster doesn't count.”
“I thought our date was memorable.”
“That is one word.”
We sat listening to rain.
Then she asked:
“Why didn't you?”
“Date?”
“Yes.”
I shrugged.
“Because marriage was good.”
She frowned.
“That seems backward.”
“It isn't.”
I looked at the dashboard.
“When something was terrible, I could imagine trying again and doing better.”
“But I didn't want better.”
“I wanted what I had.”
The woman became quiet.
I continued.
“Dating someone else felt like admitting my wife was gone in a way funerals hadn't.”
She nodded.
“I understand that.”
We sat closer than before.
Not touching.
The air between us felt different.
Dangerous.
Alive.
I looked at her.
She looked back.
For one second, I thought about kissing her.
Then my phone rang.
My sister.
Of course.
I answered.
“What?”
“Your daughter left her science project in your truck.”
I closed my eyes.
The woman laughed.
I looked at her.
She whispered:
“Saved by volcano homework.”
“Apparently.”
I drove home disappointed.
That was how I realized I was in trouble.
The next twist arrived from a storage locker.
One of my father's letters mentioned a key taped beneath the passenger seat.
The woman found it while vacuuming the truck.
Small brass key.
Number stamped into it.
We spent three days calling banks and storage facilities.
Finally, a storage business outside Grand Junction recognized the numbering system.
The unit had been paid twelve years in advance.
Four months remained.
The woman and I drove together.
Inside were three things.
A motorcycle under a tarp.
Six wooden crates.
And a workbench.
I recognized the motorcycle instantly.
My father’s old Triumph.
The same one from childhood photographs.
I walked toward it.
Dust covered everything.
My hand settled on the seat.
Memory came violently.
Me at seven.
My father letting me sit on the gas tank while the motorcycle remained parked.
My mother shouting from the porch that I would crack my head open.
My father promising we were not moving.
Then rolling three feet forward because he thought rules were suggestions.
I laughed.
Then cried without warning.
The woman stood behind me.
She did not touch.
Not until I reached back.
Then her hand entered mine.
That was our first intentional contact.
No accident.
No mechanical excuse.
Just her hand.