Like she’d just reminded me who the world belonged to.
“Morning, Brenda,” I called out, because politeness is a habit you don’t lose even when your life has already been ripped apart once. “Looks like you missed the latch.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She shifted into reverse, rolled back over my broken gate like it was nothing, and drove off down the private lane that cut through my twelve acres like a scar.
As her taillights disappeared, my jaw tightened so hard it hurt.
Six months earlier, I would’ve sworn the worst thing that could happen to a man was losing his wife.
Turns out I was wrong.
The worst thing is surviving grief just long enough for an HOA president to decide your peace doesn’t match her Pinterest board.
My name is Jake Kowalsski, and I didn’t move to Ridgewood looking for a fight.
I moved here because my lungs needed air that didn’t taste like hospitals, and my heart needed silence that didn’t echo with a woman’s absence.
Sarah died of pancreatic cancer three years ago, but time is a liar. People say “three years” like it’s a tidy number, like grief follows the calendar. The truth is, I still expected to hear her humming in the kitchen some mornings. I still caught myself buying her lavender shampoo out of habit, standing in the aisle staring at the bottle like it might bring her back if I held it long enough.
