The Gift

"Good morning, officers," I said with the customary wariness of finding the police outside your front door. It certainly looked like a good morning. The cold rain of the night before had stopped, leaving behind what promised to be a pretty early-Spring day. "What can I do for you?"

"Good morning," the older of the two said with a gravity to his voice. "Are you Mr. Young?"

"Last time I checked," I joked, in a weak attempt to inject some levity into the visit. The levity was for me, however, not them. "I'm John Young."

"Are you related to or have any connection to a Ms. Cynthia Young?"

"Cindy," I corrected. Cynthia was the name her parents gave her, but I'm not sure anyone had used it since. "Yeah, she's my wife. My estranged wife, anyway. We've been separated for about six years now. I haven't seen her since." Well, that wasn't entirely true, was it?

"Six years?" the officer asked, slightly taken aback.

"Well, we just never got around to filing for divorce," I lied. The truth was, I had declined to file, and she hadn't asked. There was a part of me that always believed she would come home someday.

Both officers drew themselves up in a very rigid, formal posture, like soldiers standing at attention. "Sir," the elder spoke again, "it is our sad duty to inform you that Ms. Young was killed last night in a car accident."

My reaction no doubt struck them as odd: I nearly laughed in their faces. "What?" I asked, managing to stop at a silly, incredulous grin. "That's impossible." I didn't elaborate, not wanting to come across as totally insane.

"One of her tires blew out on a bridge, a couple of miles from here. She lost control, skidded on the wet pavement, and struck part of the bridge structure. She was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the vehicle with enough force that it knocked her out of her shoes. If it's any consolation, she was killed instantly. She didn't suffer."

I suddenly felt like I had been punched in the stomach. "Wh-what time was the accident?" I managed to get out, my voice tight, strained.

"Shortly after midnight. Sometime around 12:18 a.m. A motorist came upon the accident and called it in to 911."

"12:18? Any chance...are you sure about the time?"

"It could have been slightly earlier. It was night and there's not a lot of traffic on that road, as I'm sure you're aware. But dispatch logged the call at 12:18. That much is certain."

"Th-thank you, officers." I felt weak in the knees.

"Sir, it's none of my business and it's not pertinent to the accident report, but do you know why your wife might have been on that road at that time of night?"

I understood the question. He was right: there isn't a lot of traffic on that road, especially at night. The reason there's not much traffic is because there's nowhere to go. I live in a fairly rural area, and the road in question is little more than a somewhat neglected two-lane spur. Besides my house, there are maybe fifty other single-family dwellings, plus a little gas station/convenience store and a video rental place. There was no reason for her to be out there. No reason that I could think of, anyway.

"I have no idea," I said, musing it over. "Maybe she was coming home. Who knows?"

"No way of knowing, I suppose," he said.

He passed over one of his business cards. There was a number scribbled on the back. "That's the number of the accident report. In the next couple of days you'll want to get a copy. I don't know if you're listed as next-of-kin." He stood silently for a bit longer, then when I said nothing else, he turned to walk away.

"Again, sir, I'm sorry for your loss. Have a good day."

"Wait, one question. If you don't know if I'm listed as next-of-kin, how did you know where to come to notify me?"

"Oh. There was a piece of paper found in her purse with this address. When we ran it through the computer, the address came back as your name. Since the last names are the same, we assumed there might be a connection."

I stood numbly as the officers walked away, got into their patrol car, and drove off. Only after they had been gone for several minutes did I drag myself back inside.

I made it maybe ten feet before sitting down hard on the floor. I was raised in a very traditional way by very traditional parents. One thing my father taught me is that "men don't cry". I don't know if Dad would have understood or not, so it's probably a good thing he wasn't there, because I cried. I cried myself sick that morning, and I didn't give a damn who saw me. When I was done, I wasn't sitting on the floor, but lying on it.

Cindy was gone. Now there never would be any reconciliation between us. After six years, the idea of us getting back together and putting our marriage back together was unlikely in the extreme, but perhaps we might have, somehow, had closure. Yes, the argument could be made that whatever had happened at 1:00 in the morning was closure, but I didn't know what that had been. I'm a skeptic, and as such I have a lot of difficulty believing in anything supernatural. And the more I thought about it, now in the cold light of day, the more convinced I was that the whole thing had been a dream.

Whether I was right to cry about her death or not, the fact remained that I was on the floor, and you eventually have to pick yourself up. I rolled onto my belly to get my legs under me. As I did, I caught a glimpse of something under a table in the hallway. It wasn't large, just a rough rectangle of some sort. I fished it out, intending to throw it away. Thankfully, I took a moment to look at it first.

At first I didn't recognize it, as I turned it over and over in my hands. Then all at once I recognized it in stunning clarity: it was a piece of cloth, torn from a certain ugly, waterlogged dress, one that belonged to someone very special. No longer willing to throw it away, I placed it lovingly in a photo album, one filled with pictures of me and Cindy in much happier times. I didn't label it; perhaps in a few years I'll get the album down for some reason or another and not remember why I kept the cloth or what its significance is. No, I decided. I'll always remember.

I touched the fabric one last time. "Thanks, Cindy," I said quietly. "Thank you for the gift. I'll always love you, babe."

As I placed the album back on the bookshelf, I realized that Cindy had been wrong about one thing: her last gift to me had not been anal sex. It had been saying goodbye.