The Things We Bury

The fedora sat on the passenger seat like a judgment I couldn't escape. Marcus's hat—the one he'd worn to our first padel match, the one I'd forbidden him from wearing to our daughter's wedding. Now it was all I had left of him, aside from the dog who waited at home.

Brutus, our golden retriever, had stopped eating two days ago. The vet said 'grief' like it was a medical diagnosis. Maybe it was.

I parked outside the corporate campus where I'd spent thirty years climbing a ladder that led nowhere. Inside, my team shuffled to their desks like zombies—not the pop culture kind with outstretched arms and groans, but the walking dead who'd sold their souls for dental benefits and a 401k match. I was their queen.

'Sarah, the Henderson merger?' Derek asked, eyes dead.

'On my desk,' I said, though it wasn't. It was at home beside Marcus's unfinished crossword.

At lunch, I drove to the padel club. Our couples' league started in an hour. I'd have to find a partner, or forfeit. The receptionist gave me pity-eyes when I asked.

'A gentleman just signed up alone. He's on court three.'

His back was to me—broad shoulders, graying hair. When he turned, I nearly dropped Marcus's hat.

'You Sarah Henderson?'

'Widowed,' I corrected automatically. 'Though everyone still says Henderson.'

'Widowed,' he repeated, testing the word. 'I'm Frank. Widower. Four months.'

We played. My body remembered what my mind had forgotten—the swing, the footwork, the satisfaction of a perfect shot. Frank played like his life depended on it.

Afterward, over lukewarm club soda, he said, 'My wife played padel. She died at forty-two. Brain tumor.'

'I'm sorry.'

'You're wearing a dead man's hat.'

I looked at Marcus's fedora, which I'd absentmindedly placed on the table. 'He left me. Died three weeks later in a motorcycle accident with his twenty-four-year-old assistant.'

Frank laughed—a real laugh, surprised and somehow delighted. 'Jesus.'

'I know.'

'The dog?' Frank nodded at Brutus's photo on my phone.

'Shepherd mix. Waiting at home. Probably wondering where her dinner is.'

'Mine too,' Frank said. 'A rescue. Best thing I've got.'

We sat there as the sun went down, two zombies who'd somehow found each other among the living, our dogs waiting at home for people learning how to be human again.