“Oh, he knows. Horses are very careful.”

“I’m not a big crier. I’m a worried mess about my sick friend.” I put my hand on the bridge of the horse’s nose; there was nothing soft about the bony ridge between Tony’s eyes. “The scale of this space is overwhelming. How could this sanctuary be here, and I’m only now discovering it? I wish my friend could see this place.” I promised myself I would bring Katie here, and my heart seemed to skip a sad beat.

“This is the kind of place you either know about or you don’t. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. That’s what it was like for me.” Griff had changed from his professional veterinarian clothes to jeans, Australian boots, and a stretched-out navy T-shirt with Yankees on it. His expression was relaxed interest with a wash of familiarity. He spoke as if we were already friends. “My name is Griffin. First and last name, by the way.”

“You mean it’s always been Griffin?”

“No, my name is Griffin Griffin. My parents thought it was adorable, and also maybe they hated me.”

“Dr. Griffin Griffin?” I forced myself not to laugh.

“Dr. Griffin Griffin. Thank you for not laughing right away.”

“Can I laugh later in my cabin when you’re not around?”

“Absolutely, I expect most people do.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what my parents were thinking. By the time people started making fun of me when I was a kid, I’d lost my parents. I never got any answers.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.” This was another moment in my life where a cliché was the only thing I could think to say and was inadequate.

“It wasn’t awesome, but there was no more laughing at the orphan boy with the odd name.” Griff swiped at a fly near his chin. “It was so long ago.”

There was a comfortable moment when neither of us spoke, then Griff said, “I was visiting a sick pig and saw you here. I came over to see if you’d like to visit Peanut, maybe get something to eat.”

“I would. Both. I’m starving.” I peered at his face and wondered if this was what his life was like. Working all day, talking with volunteers, possibly finding people who would donate money and help sustain the sanctuary.

“I can take you into Kanab, or we can see Peanut and eat leftovers from lunch. We have a vegan chef on-site and whatever is uneaten from the cafeteria gets delivered to the clinic. You know, in case we have an all-night emergency and need something to eat.”

“Let’s go to the clinic. I might not have enough energy to go find food, eat it, and then visit Peanut. Maybe if I spend more time with him, he’ll get better faster. You know, like when they hug babies in the hospital.”

“Dogs heal so fast. He’ll be ready.” He took a red bandana from the back pocket of his Levi’s and like a stoic cowboy in a movie, gestured for me to wipe the tears from my face. It was startling to have this kindness from a stranger.

I followed Griff to the staff room within the clinic, and he opened the refrigerator. “It looks like we have cold sesame and peanut noodles.” He moved a container to the right. His broad shoulders obstructed my view. “We also have fruit and gazpacho on the one hand, and two beers on the other.”

“Wow, I was expecting far less appetizing or healthy. I lose my appetite when I’m super stressed and I keep forgetting to eat. This is such a nice thing for the volunteers who don’t have any place to go.”

He looked puzzled but kind. “The cook is amazing. I’ve never eaten so well as after moving here.”

“Is that right?”

“I’m a single guy. I ate a lot of frozen pizza. What can I say?”

I smiled and distractedly thought about Maddie and our dinners. Happy affairs where she’d chat about simply everything. Once, her class had watched a documentary about how Chinese labor helped build the transcontinental railway, and she got up and acted some of the parts out. The memory of Maddie’s sunny face, her happy chatter, her call out to me, “Mom, mom, mom!” if I wasn’t fully focused. I might have been living for my daughter, but you’d never convince me that it wasn’t all worth it. My heart swelled and deflated in equal measure, the bellows that lived in my chest, the love that fueled my heart.

“I guess pizza is in my future too,” I said as much to him as to myself, and I felt a stab of loneliness for my future without Maddie at home. Possibly without Katie—and as quickly as it had appeared, I shoved that thought out of my brain. I would not bring that to fruition by considering it. I would not. “My kid is lactose intolerant and won’t eat anything but chicken. But she’s graduating and leaving soon.”

“Oh, you’re married.” I saw his eyes dart to my empty ring finger, and he gave me another unreadable expression.

“Widowed. When my daughter was an infant. I was a single mom.”

Griff nodded, handed me an open beer, and I took a long swallow. I felt the cool liquid slide all the way down my throat. I pulled out a folding chair at a table with a few empty coffee mugs that held the orange Best Friends logo. I took pride in clarifying my singledom by saying I was widowed. Despite my quiet single life, I had not been divorced, had not been given up on. I had not been at fault.

“I’m sorry. That must have been very hard.”

“At this point it’s my history and my reality.” I speared a clump of noodles with the plastic fork he’d given me. The cold noodles tasted like the best thing I’d ever eaten. I also felt the effects of the alcohol, which seemed impossibly fast and unfair.

“I’m a widower too.”

“You are? I don’t know many other widows. It’s rare. I’m so sorry.”

“Well, you know. It’s an unusual place to be in the world. People don’t know what to do with us, do they? They can’t blame us for being single, they definitely pity us, and then there’s this romantic notion surrounding it. A kind of Heathcliff-on-the-moors thing when he was lovelorn, before he got filled with rage.”

“Exactly!” I said with such vigor that a piece of noodle flew out of my mouth and landed on the table between us. I wiped my mouth and the table quickly, embarrassed.

Griffin Griffin laughed. He’d nicked himself shaving, and there was a small scab he touched with his fingertips when he talked. “If you’re keeping score, I’m an orphan and a widower.”

“Oh Lord. Yes, you are,” I said, enjoying this banter even with the tick-tick-ticking of lost minutes and our delayed arrival back home. I tried to focus on the moment instead of my time-urgent worry.

“If I become an amputee, I could be my own joke. An orphan, a widower, and an amputee stagger into a bar.”

“Or an action movie: Orphan, Widow, Cripple, Spy.”

“Cripple? You’re calling me a cripple?” Griff said good-naturedly.

“No,” I said laughing, “I’m not. You aren’t an amputee. Did you forget?”

“Oh yeah. Well, it’s something to look forward to.”

I covered my mouth. “I’m sorry. You just told me you lost your wife, and I made a joke.”

“You were provoked. If you can’t joke with someone else who’s widowed, who can you joke with?” His eyes were wide and bright, and he had a swipe of oil on his lower lip.

In a mom moment, I brushed a bit of green onion off the side of his mouth.

“Thanks.” Without breaking eye contact, he licked his lips and his thumb. And that’s when I figured out what was happening. Slow as a sloth, my mind crawled out of its ditch at the side of the road and clawed into the oncoming traffic of emotion. This man, this Griffin Griffin, was flirting with me. And my brain crept from surprise to astonishment to a five-alarm fire bell.

In a movie the two widowed people would fall into each other and apologize in the morning. But I wasn’t drunk; nor had I shaved my legs or anything else for that matter for too many years, which might have been a funny thing to consider at that moment, but old habits die hard. I could be under anesthesia and know the status of my body hair.

The larger barrier, besides my very low attractiveness and self-esteem, and my slowness to interpret mating signals, was, I realized spectacularly, Drew. For the first time in ages and ages, I was thinking of a man in a romantic way and was hoping he was thinking of me.

And there was something else. I’d often suspected if anyone—anyone—ever showed interest in me again, I’d be so desperate for attention I’d fall on my back like a submissive Labrador. But no. Look at me! I was considering two attractive men and choosing one over the other. I mean, fake choosing because I did not have confirmation that anyone was truly interested in me. But if I was reading the room, and I think I was, I had options. Thrilled was the only way to describe what I was feeling in that moment.