Small Acts
The Second Grave

Some Things Aren't Yours

August 25, 2026 · Part 3 of 10 · 2 min

Three more Tuesdays, three more rides. I stopped charging myself with a reason. I just showed up at mile fourteen at four o'clock and he was always there, like the rain summoned him.

We talked about small things. His garden, gone to weeds since his knees quit. My route, the company, how I'd bought the rig off a retiring driver two years back for less than it was worth. He asked about my people — where I was from, who raised me.

"My dad, mostly," I said. "Mom died when I was a baby. Never knew her."

Something crossed his face, there and gone so fast I almost doubted I'd seen it. He looked out the window a long time before he spoke again.

"That's a hard thing for a boy," he said. "Growing up with just the shape of somebody."

"You get used to it. Can't miss what you don't remember."

"Don't you believe that," he said, sharper than he meant to, I think, because he softened it right after. "Everybody misses it. Even the ones who don't know what they're missing."

I wanted to ask about the second grave. The one tucked in the ragged corner, the one he visited every single week same as his wife's, the one with initials that had been sitting in my chest like a stone for three weeks straight.

So I asked.

"That other stone you visit. Back corner, past the tall one." I kept my eyes on the road. "Who is she?"

The temperature in the cab dropped ten degrees.

"Some things aren't yours to dig up, son."

"I'm not digging. I'm asking."

"Same thing, where I come from." He was already reaching for the door handle, we hadn't even reached the gate yet. "Let me out here. I'll walk the rest."

"Wendell, it's pouring—"

"Let me out."

I stopped the truck. He climbed down fast for a man his age, coat catching on the door latch, and in the tangle of it something slipped from his inside pocket and dropped onto the seat where he'd been sitting. He didn't notice. He was already walking, head down, into the rain.

I called after him twice. He didn't turn around.

I picked up what he'd dropped — a photograph, old, the edges gone soft as cloth. A young woman, laughing, a baby balanced on her hip.

I turned it over. Someone had written on the back in fading pencil, decades ago by the look of it.

Adeline and the baby. June.

My mother's name was Adeline.

Continue the story Part 4: Route 9, Nineteen Ninety-Seven →

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