“You look too young to be a widow.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard those words.

Not the first time I’d told this lie: “He died in battle.”

It’s a quick way to shut down questions because—let’s face it—twenty-four is too young to lose your spouse, and, this way, everyone assumes he died valiantly on the battlefield, fighting whoever the powers that be designated as the current bad guy.

I tried to imagine Finn as a Viking, disgruntled and daring. His lips curled at the corners, a secret smile. We used to share so many of those.

“I’m sorry for your loss. Which branch did he serve in?”

Empathetic brown eyes rose to meet mine, the cab driver watching in the rearview mirror. He was handsome, fortyish. Kind. Perhaps big and strong, too, but nothing compared to my fantasy of Finn the Viking.

I sighed; the rush of breath louder than I’d intended.

This entire conversation was my fault, for correcting the driver when he referred to me as “Miss Campbell” at pick-up. It’s Mrs. At least it should have been…

I looked out the window, glaring at the blurry rows of soybean and corn, imagining Finn’s feathery lashes, the rough pads of his thumbs … and that laugh, the kind that requires you to laugh with your whole chest when you do it. God, how I loved his laugh.

Viking, he was not. But, oh how he made me smile…

Hmm … which branch did he serve in?

“Not the kind with medals and flags,” I said, finally.

The marriage part was a lie too—like so many things that happened between us, I was stretching the truth.

Finn and I were engaged, not married yet, when it happened. We said we were married so often that perhaps we even believed it.

But then Finn died. And our plans, our dreams … they all died with him in the middle of our junky living-room floor on a cold winter night. Our junky house and our junkie ways… His death as inevitable as me landing here, in rural Indiana, forced to grovel with an aunt and uncle I barely knew.

Give my daughter back. PLEASE.

The driver must not have heard me, because next thing I knew, he was talking about his own father, an accomplished military pilot…

Finn died in battle.

It was sort of a lie. Though not really.

Finn was never a soldier, but he did, in fact, wage war.

Battling his demons, putting his body through hell in its war with opioid addiction, until his body finally threw out the white flag of defeat…

You won, Finn. Your destructive willpower outlasted the shell you were born in, just like you always said it would. And now, you’ll never get the chance to make me smile or laugh again…

No more secret smiles for me.

The rest of the cab ride was silent, much to my relief.