Free The Other Widow by Susan Crawford

She could just park and run inside, visit her old friend Tomas in the ER, or wherever he is now, just to feel there’s something concrete in her life. Some one concrete, some kind of anchor. She can’t stay, she’ll explain—she has this business lunch. Joe is gone—her husband. Dead. She’ll take a breath or two, get herself under control before she mentions that her engine sounds a little off. That place in Waltham—that place Tomas worked for a while. Hoods? Does he still recommend it?
    She stops, but only for a look, a quick glance at the building, and then she heads to Summer Street. She’d gotten only two texts from Tomas when he came back from Honduras months before. I’m in Boston, he’d said in the first one, which Karen had instantly deleted. Working at Mass General again. Would love to see you . There’d been another sort of half text. Karen? Where are you???? And the question marks had added urgency, passion, but, again, she’d not responded. Would love to get a coffee and catch up , she might have said, but she hadn’t. Tomas made it clear before he left the country that he had wanted more than she. He was certainly attractive, with his soft brown eyes, his sexy smile. No argument there. Still, when Karen weighed the pros and cons of taking that next step with Tomas, she’d decided not to. He wasn’t married. He might turn out to be a little needy, show up at their front door in the middle of the night, drunk and demanding. Latin lovers were known for their passion, something Karen sensed in him that both attracted her and gave her pause.
    She turns on her iPod and drifts into the music. She could have loved Tomas, with his seductive accent, the way he said her name. Karen, the way he breathed it, like a poem, the way, no matter what was going on in his life, he always seemed to have time for her. She’d met him on the train, going home from a symphony when he’d got on at the same stop. Their legs touched as the train left the station. Lightly. A brush. He smelled of coconut and musk.
    â€œI saw you at the concert,” he’d said. “I was behind you walking out. It was very nice, although Wagner is not my favorite.”
    â€œNor mine,” she’d said.
    â€œWhat is?”
    â€œI don’t know,” she’d told him. “Anything with a glass of wine.” And he laughed.
    If anyone had asked her if she’d meant to see this stranger again, she would have said no. Absolutely not. It was only after two more times chatting on the train after symphonies that she’d begun to wish they’d sat together, yawning through the performance, leaving together afterward, crossing through the lobby, side by side, to the blanched, leftover heat of evening.
    He worked in a garage near Waltham. Hoods, and she’d made a point to take both her car and Joe’s in for anything, no matter how trivial—a hesitation in the starter, a worn-out wiper blade. He never charged her for labor. “My friend, Karen,” Tomas would introduce her whenever she came in. “Primo treatment on her car, guys.” And he would wink at her.
    â€œWe’re friends,” she’d told Alice at the time. “We’re only friends. We sometimes get a lunch together, grab a coffee in town. He’s fixed my car a couple times when he was working at his friends’ garage, but that’s it, really. Simply platonic.” And it was. Eventually he found a job at Mass General, where he worked as an orderly—he’d been a nurse in Honduras—and after that she saw him less and less. A good thing. Karen loved her husband, and even if they’d grown apart, even if he was out of town too much and brought home a dog that hated her, Joe was still the man she married. She’d understood even though he never pressed the matter that Tomas had wanted more than she could give.
    In the end, he’d gone back to