I couldn’t sleep that night. The card sat on my kitchen table, and I read the name on it again and again: Eleanor Whitfield, beloved wife of Harold. The woman in the photograph wore the same pearl earrings. I told myself the card had simply fallen from his pocket, that grief had played tricks on my eyes, and that nothing strange had happened.

The next Friday, I arrived at the wash at five. At 6:40 sharp, the Buick rolled in. Harold’s window was down, his face pale. The passenger seat was empty again. I stepped forward, holding the card in my trembling hand. “Sir, you dropped this.” He stared at it, then at me, and his voice cracked. “You saw her, didn’t you?” Before I could answer, he gripped my wrist and whispered, “Then you need to hear what she wanted me to do today.”