Fading She was important. He knew that. Knew it like he knew rain fell from clouds. Clouds in a dreary grey sky that the sun couldn’t penetrate. That fact alone he clung to, but he lost the why of it, lost it with each passing day and as time went on even within the hour. He felt it, deep and visceral, the need to know her. To reach out and touch her. He knew he had many times before. Knew – Their wedding night. Fumbling passions. Hands that roved but didn’t quite know where or how. New, and fresh, and old-fashioned. He cupped her face and leaned to kiss her lips, kiss her deep. Something wrong, something not right about it, the wrinkles in his fingers there like furrows against her cheek. Why? Where had the years gone? No, he hadn’t aged so much. She hadn’t. Her hair a white mass of cotton, her eyes so wrinkled and worn and blurred with cataracts. No, something was wrong, her name, he needed that, reached towards it but couldn’t do it with his shaking hands. Reached with something else, his mind, a rattling old machine. Churn, screech, emission of smoke like The train was coming. He could see it on the rails. It would bring her, slow and steady, chugging along. The first time he saw her, pale and beautiful. Skin not like his. Not calloused from hard work. White dress, white parasol to blot out the harshness of the sun. There she was, looking at him, saw him smeared in coal dust from the filling of the engine. Her smile. Oh, God in heaven, her smile. She walked towards him. She. She Best not to disturb him. We don’t want to make him upset. There. Yes. There she was, he remembered now. She moved in, lived there in that town, lived there like clean cloth covers a stain. Gracious. Undemanding. Softness of politeness and lace. She was kind to him. She was kind to all. She was above all and lorded over none. That she spared a glance his way was beautiful, always beautiful. It didn’t matter if those teeth were hers or polished fakes, it was the way her eyes crinkled. The way it just consumed her face. As if for just a brief moment her magnanimous existence had in some way been refined by his meager presence. He had to have her, but not like others wanted to. The dowry was just an obstacle. He had to have her like a rose nurtured and held behind glass, to protect it from the weather but let the sun in. To glory in it for what it was, for as long as he was able. He would work, yes, he gained the money. He would? He did. He did, yes, just a moment, there it was. Flitting, fleeting, reach for it. He’d done this thing. This was his past. His history, his STORY. He could see it as his, her face hovering just in the corner, brilliant. Unblemished even when it was. Her name I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’re going to make him upset. You really shouldn’t tell him. Footsteps. Someone came. Someone’s coming. Almost there. Hovering, it’s hovering, all he had to do was reach out and take it. His tongue danced, his hand, that shaking hand (when did it get so old?) reached and reached and reached and Gone. Where? Where was it? Where was he? A name, that’s what he’d wanted. A name. But whose, and why? Had it been Do you recognize this woman? A picture held up. There, smiling. There, eyes crinkling. Familiar, maybe. Vaguely familiar, like a face he’d seen on the street once. She died today, Mr. Carter. I’m sorry. He shrugged. I didn’t know her anyway.