Laura

Intro Kim, my beautiful wife, is gone. Dead, from cancer, after 35 years of marriage. I was going to retire in 10 years, and then we were going to travel and make up for all the time we lost working and raising a family. I remember returning home from her funeral. I opened my dresser drawer and saw the .38. I picked it up. I wanted to be with Kim. I knew she was in heaven, her faith getting her there. I took the gun again and decided that it was the path to hell. It wouldn't get me to her. I put it away.   During the first 2 months after her death, my friends called to check up on me. They invited me for dinner and tried to help me. After 2 months, the calls started to decrease. By the 3rd month, no one was calling. They were living their own lives, lives I didn't fit into anymore. The darkness set in..    I started going to Roxy's Diner for meals after work. I started out one a week, but it soon turned into 3-5 times a week. It got so the waitresses knew my name, and I knew there's. It was hard to get to know them, however, since they were pretty busy. Laura was my favorite. She always had a smile and quick comeback for anything I said. She was pretty, a divorcee with a small child. She worked a lot and was usually there. She seemed to share some things about her life with me. I watched her interact with the other customers one night. I saw that she had the same charm and smiles for them. Nothing she said to them was any different than what she said to me. I decided she was a good actress, and the loneliness lingered.