The man told himself it must have been the woman from the north country who took his winter coat from the back pew after the service. After all, it was a funeral and people were distracted. He was distracted with the grief and guilt that come from burying a wife who was younger than him. No one saw the woman take his coat, so how could he be sure? He only knew she was from a direction: “True north,” she said, when she introduced herself as a true friend of his dead wife. True or not, he didn’t believe her. Hours later, when he was leaving the church for the cold January afternoon, the coat was missing. And the black leather gloves in the left pocket that his wife had given him years before. The gloves still smelled of her scent: a hint of night-blooming jasmine.

Three days later, the coat appeared on the pew at the back of the church. No one saw who returned it—as if its blackness came back on its own. The gloves were still missing, but the pockets weren’t empty. The man told himself the woman from the north country left souvenirs. A hotel key from an inn at the airport. A small bottle of hand lotion. A throat lozenge. One cigarette: lit, snuffed out, with coral lipstick stains on the filter, broken in half. Loose tobacco everywhere. In the left pocket, the smell of tobacco overwhelming any hint of jasmine.

The man wanted to buy a compass and head for the north country. The true north country. But, what would he do when he got there? Look for a woman with coral lips? Or try to quiet his own heart bursting in his black coat? Where does the past live? In the empty air of grief, or a man’s longing?

Bio: Linda Nemec Foster