Four in the afternoon. I’m on the porch, sipping an IPA, reading Lonesome Gods. I hear tires on gravel, a car motor. Squeal of brakes that need a tune-up. Glance left, and there’s a little red convertible pulling up on the far side of the other cabin. The top is back, and I get a glimpse of black hair.

The engine shuts off, and there’s a while of silence, followed by the car door opening…closing. I can make out the nose of the car, some of the windshield, and some of the front seat. A tall, slender figure emerges around the front of the cabin. A woman.

She’s wearing black leggings, colorful sneakers, and a baggy gray sweatshirt hanging low on one shoulder. Her hair is long and black, loose around her shoulders. A purse hangs from her left elbow; sunglasses perched up on the top of her head.

You know how sometimes, even though you can’t make out someone’s features, you can tell just by seeing them from a distance that they’re good-looking? I get that feeling with her. She’s gonna be beautiful.

It’s weird to even think that. I haven’t really noticed women, not for years. I tried, too. But it just went…nowhere. I couldn’t make my heart less of an ice block, couldn’t make my brain interested, nor my body. It’s like I just shut down when Lisa died, and not all the systems came up online again.

So to even think about a woman as being beautiful, worth noticing, is in itself weird.

She just stands on the porch, staring at something in her hand—a key, I imagine. Something about the way she’s just standing there feels familiar. Like she’s getting up the nerve to go in. Like I did, the first time.

Whoever she is, she was given that key by Adrian. Or this is whoever he sold the other part of the property to. But somehow, my gut tells me he didn’t sell it. He bought it at the end of his life, with a particular purpose in mind.

Maybe it’s his wife.

Nadine? No, I always think it’s that, but it’s not. Nadia? I think that’s her name. Maybe it’s her.

I just sit on my porch, the sweating bottle cold in my hands, and watch. Eventually, I see her sigh. Even from here, it feels heavy, that sigh. She unlocks the door, and vanishes inside.

She’s in there a while. An hour, maybe. When it’s clear she’s not coming back out right away, I go back to reading, but now my mind is on her. Wondering who she is, if my—not assumption, nor a guess; my feeling, I suppose it is—if my feeling that the woman is Adrian’s widow, is correct.