After thirty-eight years of a wife across the table, I walked into a diner alone. The hostess looked flustered and sat me across from a woman I'd never met.
Double-booked. I nearly apologized and left, but she just smiled and said, 'I don't bite.' So I stayed.
I had a seed packet in my jacket pocket. Past its plant-by date. Sweet peas. My wife bought them the spring before she passed.
The woman noticed the corner sticking out. 'What are you planting?' she asked. I told her nothing yet. 'They only have one season,' she said. 'Plant them anyway.'
My hands are used to steel hawsers and rough lines. That morning, they'd helped the home health aide fold my wife's last clean sheets.
I ordered the special. We talked for two hours. She was a retired librarian who'd also lost someone. We split the check.
The sweet peas are in the ground now. They won't bloom until long after their date. Neither will I. But I'm planted.