The Walk

Every evening, my father went for a walk. Same route, same time, rain or shine. He'd be gone exactly thirty minutes.\n\nI never thought much about it. It was just Dad's walk.\n\nAfter he died, my mother asked me to clean out his closet. I found a worn-out map tucked inside his coat pocket. The map had a route marked — not our neighborhood, but a street across town.\n\nI drove there. It was a quiet residential street. And at the end, a small cemetery.\n\nI found the headstone. It belonged to a woman I'd never heard of. "Margaret Anne," it read. "Beloved wife and mother. 1945-1985."\n\nI asked my mother about her.\n\n"She was your father's first love," my mother said quietly. "She died of cancer when she was forty. Your father never got over her. But he loved me too, in his way."\n\nEvery evening, my father walked to visit a woman who died before I was born. Thirty minutes. Every day.\n\nI don't know how to feel about it. But I know that love doesn't end when someone dies. It just finds new ways to exist.