The Donzerly Light by Ryne Douglas Pearson

Grady she knew so well, maybe brood a little in the process, and he would come out of it, just like he always did.
    And, God, wouldn’t it be fantastic when they did have a place like Floral Park where he could decompress. Sit in the backyard and pet the dog and sip iced tea, with her by his side in the lazy embrace of an Adirondack chair. It would be so perfect, and he would love it. She just knew that he would.
    “You know,” she said tenderly, stealing a wary glance over her shoulder to check for Mr. Maranescu before leaning close once more to plant a kiss on the tip of his nose, “when you retire with your first ten million before forty, I ain’t lettin’ you out of my sight, Jay Grady. That’s a promise.”
    Carrie tapped his nose where she’d kissed him and left, moving down the counter to fill where filling was needed. He watched her for a moment, but a moment only, because the questions returned. The ‘why’ and the ‘why me’ and the ‘how’ and the ‘what’, and the void that spun from each unanswered query seemed so very...so very...
    His thoughts stopped abruptly, old memory surging at him like black water, cold and heavy.
    ...so very familiar .
    Yes, familiar. The futility, it was. The questions that could never be answered. Questions like ‘why did the coins do what they did?’ or ‘why did they do what they did for me ? or...or the other question.
    The old question.
    ‘Why did my parents have to die?’
    No answer there, he knew. No tangible answer, that is. He’d come to believe in his own approximation of reason since then—they had died because they were poor—but no ironclad explanation had ever made itself known. He’d longed for it, but what had that gotten him? Nothing. Nothing then. Nothing ever.
    Sometimes—then and (maybe) now—you just had to accept things, painfully inexplicable things, and go on. Now matter how much it hurt. No matter how much it nagged. This he believed. He hated the lopsided compromise of the concept, but still he believed.
    “Babe?”
    “What?” Jay’s eyes ballooned out of the state that had swum over him and he saw Carrie again, standing just across the counter.
    “Are you okay? You looked really...sad there for a minute.”
    “No. Yes. I’m fine. Just...work stuff.”
    “Are you sure?” she asked with sweet doubt.
    “I’m fine,” he assured her, not lying, because was there anything wrong? Hell, he could think of a thousand guys on the street who would give their right nut to have the fleeting kind of knowing that he had had this day. The girls on the street? Well, they’d give something else, but they would give, too, baby. Without a doubt.
    A broker’s wet dream was right, he thought. If only it hadn’t ended. God, what would have come of that?!
    Green, green, and more green, he knew. That was what.
    “I’m fine, sweetie,” he told her again, feeling a little closer to the pronouncement than a moment before. The little hiccup of old, bitter memory was gone now, back where it belonged in some dark corner of his head where such things brooded until roused. “Really, I’m fine.”
    She nodded obligingly, though she wondered about his sincerity. But she would not let that show. As she’d reconfirmed a few minutes before, she would allow him his space. All the space he needed. “Go home, babe,” she suggested, taking his receipt and change from the front of her apron and putting it on the counter where his plate had been. “Kick off your shoes and put on the TV. Have a beer and just relax. Hmm?”
    “That may be a good idea,” he agreed quite honestly. Put on the tube, catch the end of a MacGyver rerun, sip a cold one, and let the day fade. Fade like all things faded. “I think I will.”
    She leaned close and planted a soft kiss on his cheek, poking a little tongue between her lips just because, and then she walked around the plating station and into the kitchen. Jay watched her until she was gone, and then he reached for his