He passed away not long after. Thirty-seven. Too young by any measure.


For a while, grief lived in the house like a fourth child—loud, unpredictable, impossible to ignore. Roberta carried the weight of remembering for both of them. She replayed the laundromat. The letters. Their vows. The birth of each child. The nights he hummed them all to sleep.


But memory, she learned, could hurt and heal at the same time. Every story she told their children stitched another piece of him into the world.


When she returned one quiet evening to the old Baxter Springs laundromat, she found it empty, machines humming just as they had the night they met. She set her basket down and smiled through tears.


Some people meet once by chance

and spend the rest of their lives living the echo of that moment.


Roberta folded her clothes slowly, letting the warm air from the dryers soften the ache in her chest. Love had begun here. And though it ended too soon, its warmth—like the humming machines—kept on.