The Last Orange Season

The mornings were the hardest. That's when the dog—Maggie's retriever, now mine by default—would stare at the empty chair with those expectant eyes, waiting for footsteps that would never echo down the hallway again. Six months after the funeral, and I still couldn't bring myself to sit there. Couldn't bear the weight of her absence concentrated in that single empty space at the breakfast table.

That Tuesday, I finally did it. I cleared out her office. The room smelled of old paper and the orange perfume she wore—citrus and nostalgia, a scent that had become its own kind of ghost. In the bottom drawer, beneath stacks of unfinished manuscripts, I found the photograph. Us, twenty years younger, standing on that overlook in Big Bear, the sun setting behind mountains that seemed endless then.

On the back, in her neat cursive: 'This is where I knew.'

Knew what? That she was dying? That she loved me? That life was simultaneously too long and too short? The dog nudged my hand, and I realized I was crying, tears dripping onto the glossy surface of a moment frozen in time.

I found myself driving toward the mountains that evening, the dog riding shotgun with his head out the window, ears streaming in the wind. At a roadside stand, I bought a bag of oranges—the kind she used to peel for me on winter evenings, careful to remove every bitter thread of pith. The citrus scent filled the car, overwhelming and familiar.

At the overlook, the sun painted the sky in bruised purples and oranges—her colors. I sat on the hood of the car, peeling one of the oranges, the juice sticky on my fingers, watching as day surrendered to night. The dog pressed against my leg, and for the first time since she died, the silence didn't feel like an accusation.

Somehow, in the space between sunset and starlight, I understood what she'd meant. She'd known that love isn't about the duration—it's about the intensity. About bearing witness to each other's lives, however briefly they overlap. The dog sighed, resting his chin on my knee. Below us, the lights of the city flickered on, thousands of tiny burning hearts.

I finished the orange, sweet and sharp on my tongue. The cold air bit at my skin, but for the first time in months, I didn't mind. The night would come, as it always did. But so would the morning.