They arrived early for their flight.

If they hadn’t, if he had taken the other exit or stopped to get those donuts, she might have missed him completely. But they were early and her flight was delayed so she saw him walking down toward where ever his gate was. He was carrying two bags, had a backpack on his shoulder, and a little girl holding his hand. He looked better than he did when they were dating. He looked stronger, he had grown into himself. His hair was turning gray and he had developed some kind of fashion sense. That thought stopped her.

Maybe he hadn’t developed anything. Maybe he was married and that was his wife’s clothing choice. She didn’t know why it mattered to her. She watched him stop walking, move to the side, bend down to sign to the girl. He laughed. Took off his backpack and gave it to her. Her best friend, who she was travelling with as far as Kansas City, was next to her. She had spotted him, too.

“Is that?”

“Yeah. I’m going to go say hi.”

She stood up before she realized what she was doing. He had put the backpack on the girl. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven.

“Hi.”

He stood up.

“Hi. Sam, this is an old friend of mine. Jess, this is Sam, my daughter.”

She wasn’t expecting it to be his daughter. He might have been married, she gave him that, but not with a daughter. A pretty cute daughter, too, one who smiled easily. She wasn’t expecting him to sign to her. There was an awkward pause.

Now that she was over there she wasn’t really sure what to say. Ten years had pass and he wasn’t the person she left. The man in front of her was responsible enough to have a daughter, his hair cut, and his face shaved.

*****

I took her to her mother’s parents’ every winter. We would stay through Thanksgiving, Christmas, return some time after New Years. My parents’ didn’t like it much but never said anything against it. They understood why I had to. Why I wanted to.

The more she grows, the more she reminds me of her. The way she smiles. She’s starting to write and somehow she has her mom’s y and e. When she does something that reminds her of me, that’s when I become startled. When she eats her hamburger like me, flipping the bun around, that’s the part that kills. She’s our kid. We made her, together. I was lucky enough to have a part of her for such a short period of time, and lucky, again, to have a part of me in such an amazing kid.

When we go to Minnesota it has already snowed, begun snowing. I sit on her grandfather’s porch, my ex-father-in-law, and watch her run down the same hill her mom used to at the same age. I watch her sled and build forts and we have snow ball wars and I imagine that she was like that. I imagine my wife, six years old, breaking the top layer of snow, falling down, thigh deep, hip deep, into whiteness, her laughter ringing back from the trees at the back of their property.

The first winter we had together as a family, right after she was born, we came to Minnesota. Her parents watched our kid as she led me through their property, telling me different stories of her, of the land, than the ones she had told me two summers ago there.

We went past the trees, into the light woods, away from the house, and I followed her sure footed, knowing she wouldn’t lead me down a path she didn’t know, didn’t trust.

*****

After we broke up I completely eradicated him from my life. I switched colleges and moved in with my best friend out of state. I got a job in a different field. I didn’t even eat Mexican for a year because rice, stupidly, reminded me of him. But I always said the break up was for the best. It was my decision, after all.

All those little things about him that I loved when we were together, like the times he would decorate my car in whatever motif made him laugh that day, I would sit around and talk about as an example of his immaturity. The way he could go months without a hair cut, getting shaggy, I used as an example of how I obviously needed a man who could dress and look like he could take me out to a five star restaurant. I’d ignore the fact that, as shaggy as he could get, as unshaven and sloppily dressed, he could cook better than most chefs in those restaurants.

I dated other guys. Met this man who had established himself in his career field. Who looked good in a suit. Who had a new car he got detailed once a month. Who fit this mold of what I had always imagined my husband to be. We married. A big wedding, flowers everywhere, and he looked incredible in his tux.

We settled into our lives. Separate careers in the morning, coming home to a clean house (he had hired a maid). Dinner, usually take out. Sex. And then the sex slowed down. And then there would be nights he wouldn’t come home. I would go out with my friends from work. I was convinced the marriage was working. Was perfect, in fact. We never argued, the bills were mostly paid on time, at his office Christmas party he would guide me around with his hand in the small of my back, possessive, and I would lean into him. We would go home, him, drunk, me sober enough to drive, and the sex would be decent but never… complete.

It was everything I had wanted, and hoped for. And then I found the pictures. He had left them out, almost as if he wanted to get caught. Shot after shot, poses, a naked woman, not me, him, her mouth on him.

From the wedding until the first appointment with my attorney had taken six years. Now I was in this airport with my best friend, flying with her as far as my parents, spending Thanksgiving almost single, and he was there.

Someone playing a joke on me had put his gate across from mine. Not knowing he was coming we had already chosen our seats, facing toward the other gate, sun at our back.

Now he was there. Hair cut, in a nice outfit that he seemed to feel comfortable in. With his daughter. With a wedding ring on. It was funny how, when and if I thought of him, I never imagined him married. He was always out there, single, maybe dating, but always kind of alone.

I watched him with her daughter. Sam. He had laid on the floor, facing his daughter, facing me, and they signed. They signed. He would laugh and there was so much love coming from him that I was jealous of this six or seven year old girl.

Our flights were delayed. Sam had become tired and was resting on him, her head on his chest.

******

After she died the pain was unbearable. Overwhelming. I’m not proud to say it, but I let myself get taken by it. Those first few days I barely remember, save for bits and pieces. Picking out the casket. Sleeping on the couch. Standing, empty, in the bedroom.

Then I woke up to her climbing onto the couch with me and then I realized it wasn’t just me, I couldn’t let myself go. I still had her. I curled up around her tiny body and she fell asleep, her head on my arm, my arm falling asleep, so little and fragile and her heart beat so strongly in her chest and she saved me.

At night, though, was when the pain came back the worst. At night, falling asleep on the right side in a cold bed, missing her talking and laughing, missing her moving around our bedroom looking for her keys or a pen or whatever she had lost. Missing her reading next to me. That was the worst.

But the days moved on. The days moved on and the pain, the big sharp empty aching pain, I grew accustomed to it. Then, out of the blew, these little things, little stupid reminders, would come flying at me and surprise me and rip right through me.

I would be washing my hands and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, notice my ring. I would notice it and this memory of sitting on the balcony of our apartment, before the house, before the wedding, looking out over this parking lot that butted up to some trees. Looking out at these trees, trying so hard to come up with the right vows.

And I would come back to myself, my forehead pressed into the lip of the sink, I would come back to myself crying.

******

I had gone to the bar with a few friends from work. They were shooting pool, I was drinking, laughing, and then I saw her. She was off, over by the darts, smiling and I could’ve sworn she was the absolute, most beautiful girl and I wanted to take her home.That’s all it was, at first, this gut reaction, this lust. Pure and simple and I had never acted on that feeling before, but this time I got up and started walking toward her. About halfway there I realized what I was doing and veered toward the bathroom. I passed her and swore I caught a whiff of her. Cookies and play dough and somehow everything perfect and I realized I’d drunk too much.

I went to the restroom and was walking pass the women’s room when the door popped open, popped me in the nose. As soon as it did I got that copper taste in the back of my throat, that penny in the mouth taste. After that came the pain. She’d broken my nose.

Afterwards I’d wish I could’ve been smooth. Made some jokes, had her laughing, shrugged it off. Something super manly. What I did, though, was cuss. Loudly. Something like god damn mother fucker.

I’d bent over, holding my nose. I saw her shoes. Tennis shoes when everyone else was wearing heels. Bright blue tennis shoes with orange laces.

I stood up. She was still amazing. I still wanted her in my bed. But I was bleeding, steadily, from my nose.

I couldn’t drive. None of my coworkers wanted to leave. She offered to take me to the hospital. I agreed. Her friend came along with us; I guess to prevent me from attempting anything but the pain was making me too nauseous to do anything pass thinking of her smooth her skin must be.

That is how I met my wife. A broken nose, fast car ride, apology drinks the week later and it was like she’d always been in my life. The rest came easy to me, if not her. Marriage, the house, the kid. Cleaning the gutters while she did whatever she did around the house. It was so simple and easy and beautiful and then the wreck happened and, again, we were in the hospital. Again, the taste of copper in the back of my throat. Again, a broken nose, fast car ride.

But the drinks wouldn’t be apologetic. The drinks would be to dull everything, to forget.

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