I looked idly at the woman in the corner.

Part of me felt like I ought go up and talk to her, find out who she was and how she knew him. But there was another part too, a part that really did not want to. A part that was telling me I should not bother since whoever she was, she could never have been as important to him as I was. They could not have shared what we shared.

My mind jumped forward to how the conversation would go. She would talk about how she met him in a bus or a train; perhaps how she is a teller at his bank and he had always smiled at her and wished her a pleasant day. It would be a trifle like that. It had to be.

My mind refused to think of her as anything but insignificant.

And there she would sit; talking, babbling on, thinking of us as kindred; as if we could understand each other! I could feel my body shaking, almost retching at the thought of her and I being connected by him.

And yet, despite all this I needed to know who she was. If I walked away today; weeks later, when the grief would recede, I knew I would find myself wondering about her.

And so I sat there wrestling between my pride and my desire to know; my conceit and my curiosity. 

The others slowly started shuffling out of the room; but she remained there weeping, and I remained staring at her.

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