I’d been coming to the support group for over two months, and although I had expected it to be mostly women when I had gone the first time, I had been surprised to discover all the men in attendance too. They had an emotional depth that I’d never witnessed in other men, not even in my father, and he was an emotional man. Unfortunately, their emotional maturity had come at the expense of unimaginable heartache and loss. Most of the men had been in their late forties and had lost their wives to cancer, much like my own story.

I’d never expected to be a widow at such a young age. Nobody did. When I’d married my first husband, James, I’d had the same dream as everyone else—build a family together and grow old watching our grandchildren play, hopefully great-grandchildren, if we were lucky. Nobody was ever prepared to hear the word cancer, and it slapped us in the face, just like it had everyone else after James went in for his physical that year. I envied the men and women whose spouses died quickly and with dignity. Brain cancer was a slow, debilitating death that stripped every part of his former self. It had been awful to watch, and as hard as my sons prayed for James’s healing, in the end they prayed just as hard for his death. They were the ones who suggested I find a support group for widows. Cancer hadn’t just sucked the life out of James—it’d sucked the life out of me, too, so I went even though I’d never been to any kind of support group before.

I’d already started settling into my new reality when Scott had shown up. I immediately recognized him when he walked into the church basement. Most of us did. You couldn’t live in Arcata and not know about him. His face had been all over the news and media outlets. In a town as small as ours, something like that affected us all. Some of us were part of the teams that had combed the surrounding woods and riverbanks looking for any sign of her.

His brown hair had grayed at the roots, but he looked better than he’d looked all those years ago on TV when he’d been ravaged by grief and resembled a madman as he begged for anyone with information on his wife to come forward. He’d put on weight, and it’d filled out his face, making him appear friendlier and more relaxed. His full lips were closed, and he didn’t look at any of us as he slid into one of the aluminum chairs in the circle. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor in front of him.

He was like that for months and didn’t even speak other than to introduce himself during the beginning of the meeting, but he slowly opened up over time. We became friends and were strictly platonic for years, because he refused to believe Kate wasn’t coming back. We started playing chess online late at night, since chronic insomnia was another thing we had in common, and, much like the other, it began when we’d lost our spouses. We instant messaged back and forth while we played. He spoke more in our online chats than he did in group, but then again so did I. Communicating online gave me a brazenness I wished I had in my interactions in the real world.