Henry Ward sat on the bench in the gazebo on Ladiga Street and North Centre Avenue, watching the cars go by. He did this most mornings now. Not because there was anyone, or anything, worth waiting for, but because it was something to do.

At seventy-six, his world had gotten very small. Once, he’d been the man everyone in town knew. He’d run the machine shop for thirty years, fixing everything from lawn mowers to diesel engines, and he’d coached Little League even longer. In those days, he couldn’t walk down the street without someone calling his name.

Now, no one called it.

He had closed the shop after his arthritis made it too painful to work, and the Little League coach was a young man with tattoos up his arms and music Henry couldn’t understand. Most of the boys Henry had coached were men now; men with lives that didn’t cross paths with his.

Henry’s wife, Grace, had been gone a little over five years. He still talked to her sometimes, out loud, in the house, just to break the silence. Her chair at the kitchen table sat empty, the cushion still a little flattened from the way she used to sit.

His daughter lived two hours away in Atlanta, busy with her job, her husband, her own grown children. She came down every couple of months. Henry always told her he was doing fine. She always believed him.

The town had changed. The grocery store was now a coffee shop with chalkboard menus, and the young people sat with glowing screens instead of talking to each other. The old café, where Henry used to meet friends for breakfast, had shut down after most of them had passed away.

He’d tried making new acquaintances, but conversations with strangers tended to trail off when they realized he didn’t have much in common with them anymore.

That morning, sitting in the gazebo, Henry saw a group of kids from the high school laughing as they walked past. None of them looked at him. He tried to remember the last time someone had actually used his name without checking first to see if they had it right.

It was early afternoon when he headed home. Inside, the air was still, the house dim. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down in his recliner.

The Atlanta Braves were playing on the screen, but he wasn’t watching it.

The shadows lengthened across the carpet, and Henry thought about how, when Grace was alive, she’d call from the kitchen, “Henry, come and eat before it gets cold!”, and he’d answer without looking away from whatever he was doing, knowing she’d be there.

Now, there was no voice, no sound at all except the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.

Henry closed his eyes, thinking about how much he missed Grace.

Outside, the wind rattled the empty flagpole in front of the post office, people and cars darted about on their errands. But no one saw the last chair in Henry’s kitchen, sitting quietly, waiting for someone who would never come back.

And, you know I mustn’t neglect the obligatory shameless self-promotion. New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.