For a second, I forgot how to breathe.
“My wife?” I said. “Emily never mentioned you.”
He shook his head slowly.
“She didn’t know me,” he said. “At least, not really. She probably didn’t even remember my face. But I never forgot hers.”
Then he glanced at the grass beside the headstone.
“Can I tell you what happened?”
I should have said no.
I should have walked away.
But something in his voice stopped me.
So we sat there, on opposite sides of my wife’s grave — me, her husband of twenty years, and this stranger who somehow carried a piece of her story I had never known.
His name was Mike.
He was forty-seven, a mechanic, and a single father.
His daughter, Kaylee, had been diagnosed with leukemia when she was only nine years old. Insurance covered part of the treatment, but not nearly enough. He sold his house. Worked every hour his body could handle. His motorcycle club held fundraisers, passed helmets around at bars, organized charity rides.
Still, they were forty thousand dollars short.
“I was breaking,” Mike said, his voice rough. “I had a little girl fading in a hospital bed, and I couldn’t afford to save her.”
One afternoon, he had stepped into the hallway because he didn’t want Kaylee to see him cry.
That was when Emily found him.
“She wasn’t even assigned to my daughter’s ward,” he said. “She was just passing through. But she stopped anyway.”
Emily had asked him if he was okay.
