There it was. And there she wasn’t. Before he approached it, he checked his watch: he wasn’t late, but she had always been there waiting on those steps for him. Today she was not. Today instead of her beaming smile and her loving eyes there simply lay a single glove, leather and black, its fingers forlornly flopping in the wind. He sat down next to it and knew without knowing that it was hers and that she would not be back for it—that she would not be back for him and he set his bouquet of irises, her favorite, down on the cold concrete of the step in front of him and he looked to the horizon and watched the dimming of the sky as the sun set behind him and in the waning light he turned, looked at the glove, and gently grabbed it. It was small, as her hands had been, and it was worn, wrinkled, aged, but to him it was wholly new. Suddenly he noticed the chill on his own hands, folded the glove, and pushed it into his breast pocket and walked down the steps. He did not turn back to see the listless irises turn to and fro in the breeze. Under the stars he walked and touched his coat pocket and thought that somewhere she was and somewhere she had the other glove and they were eternally united, and a cloud of breath swarmed around him in the cold night air.