Just Keep Going

Stan Kowalski died in October.

The factory sent a box with his things. Work gloves, cracked at the knuckles. A watch that had stopped at 3:14 PM. A thermos from the breakroom, dented on one side. A letter from the company expressing "profound sadness" and enclosing a check for eighty-five thousand dollars.

Daniel Reeves drove from Columbus to the factory town and picked up Amy.

The drive took two hours. Daniel drove a Honda with 180,000 miles on it. The heater worked in the summer and the air conditioning worked in the winter, but never both at the same time. It was October, so the heater worked.

Amy sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window at the flat Ohio landscape passing by—cornfields gone brown, silos, the occasional strip mall with a half-empty parking lot. She was seventeen. She had dark hair that she kept cut short because it was easier. She wore a jacket her father had left her. It was too big in the shoulders.

Daniel didn't talk much on the drive. He had talked enough at the funeral—shaking hands, saying the right things, nodding at the right moments. Now he was tired of talking.

They arrived in Columbus at 5 PM. The sky was the color of wet concrete. The apartment was on the east side, a two-bedroom with white walls that were not a nice white—just white, like the landlord didn't want to spend money on color.

The furniture was secondhand. A couch with a tear in the arm. A dining table with a wobbly leg that Amy fixed with a folded piece of cardboard. A kitchen with a refrigerator that made a clicking sound every time the compressor kicked in.

Daniel went to the kitchen and made pasta. Canned tomato sauce. Salt. The kind of pasta that costs ninety-nine cents a box.

"I am not a good cook," he said, setting a plate in front of her. "But this is safe."

Amy ate it. It tasted like canned tomato and salt.

"Thank you," she said.

They sat in the kitchen and ate in front of the television. Some game show. Neither of them was watching.

The next morning, Amy started school. A high school near the apartment, a brick building with windows that didn't close all the way and a gymnasium that smelled like sweat and old rubber.

She sat in the back of the room and watched her classmates talk about prom and part-time jobs and what they wanted to do after graduation. Nobody asked her what she wanted to do. Nobody told her she should know.

After school, she went home. Daniel was at the college. The apartment was quiet. She sat on the couch and watched the light change on the wall and then she got up and made pasta.

Canned tomato sauce. Salt.

She sat in the kitchen and ate in front of the television. Same game show.

Nothing happened.

Not dramatically. Not catastrophically. The story is about the thing that almost never appears in fiction: life after something bad, when the bad thing is over and the story is supposed to end but doesn't, because real life doesn't end.

Amy started working at a convenience store near Daniel's apartment. Not because they needed the money—the settlement money was still running out, slowly, like a tap that wouldn't fully close—but because she needed to be somewhere other than the apartment during the day. Daniel needed to be at the college. She needed to not be alone with her thoughts for eight hours.

The store was on a corner near the highway. Fluorescent lights. A cooler that made a clicking sound like Daniel's refrigerator. A counter with a register that jammed every third transaction.

The woman who worked at the register across the highway came over sometimes and made comments.

"Must be nice, having a man take care of you," she said one evening.

Amy didn't know what to say.

"You know what they say about old men and young girls," the woman continued.

Amy went home and told Daniel.

"Don't listen to her," he said.

"I'm not listening," she said.

But she was.

Mike worked at the convenience store down the road. He came to hers on a Thursday evening and asked if she wanted to go bowling.

"No," she said.

He said, "Okay," and left.

He came back the next Thursday. She said no again.

Third Thursday: she said maybe.

Fourth Thursday: she went.

Mike drove a 1994 Ford Taurus with a dent in the passenger door. He played bowling on Thursdays. He had a mother who called him every Sunday and a father who hadn't called in three years.

At the bowling alley, Mike rented shoes that were too big for Amy. She bowled—not well, but not badly. Her second ball hit the pin setter and bounced back and hit her in the shin. She didn't say anything. She kept bowling.

Afterward, Mike drove her home. They sat in the car for a minute in the parking lot. The engine was running. The heater was on.

"Good night," Mike said.

"Good night," she said.

He drove away. She went inside.

Daniel was in the kitchen making pasta. Canned tomato sauce. Salt.

"You went bowling," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"Did you have fun?"

"I don't know. It was bowling."

He nodded. "That is something."

Amy turned eighteen in March. It was a Tuesday.

She and Daniel went to Walmart and bought a small cake from the bakery section. It cost four dollars and ninety-seven cents. They ate it at the kitchen table with their fingers. There was no candle. There was no song.

"Happy birthday," Daniel said.

"Thank you," she said.

They sat in silence for a while. The refrigerator clicked. The game show on the television announced a winner. Neither of them was listening.

At the convenience store, a customer left a five-dollar bill on the counter and didn't wait for change. Amy put the five dollars in the register. She thought about calling Karen, her aunt, but she didn't. Her aunt would ask questions. Questions were hard to answer.

One evening, the bathroom handle broke. Amy was inside, washing her hands, and the handle just came off in her grip—metal twisting, plastic cracking. She turned it. Pushed it. Pulled it. Nothing.

She sat on the toilet and waited. Ten minutes. Twenty. The store was quiet. The fluorescent lights hummed. She thought about calling out but nobody would hear. The store was empty except for her.

She heard a car pull up outside. Daniel's car.

She opened the door a crack and stuck her hand out and turned the handle. It came off in her fingers.

"Daniel," she said. Her voice was flat. Not panicked. Just stating a fact.

He appeared at the door. He looked at the handle in her hand. He looked at her face.

"Okay," he said.

He walked to his car. She heard the engine start. She heard it drive away. She heard him come back twenty minutes later with a screwdriver from Walmart.

He opened the door. She walked out. Nothing was said.

She went to the sink and washed her hands. The faucet dripped. She fixed it with a twist of her wrist, the way she had seen him fix things a hundred times.

The snow came in November. It fell on Columbus like it fell everywhere in November—gray and slow and unremarkable, the kind of snow that doesn't make anyone stop and stare at the sky but does make people drive a little slower and a little more carefully.

Amy was at the register on a Friday night. The store was quiet. A few people came in for cigarettes and coffee and cold beer. She rung them up. She made change. She watched the clock on the wall.

Her phone rang. It was Mike.

"Wanna go to a movie?"

"Maybe."

"Okay."

She hung up. She looked out the window at the snow falling on the empty parking lot. She opened the bottom drawer of the register and found a beer she hadn't opened yet. Someone had left it there—probably the previous shift, probably forgot to put it in the cooler.

She opened it. It was cold and bitter and she drank half of it in one go. She was eighteen now. She was allowed to do that. She finished the beer. It tasted bad. She drank another sip anyway.

Daniel walked in from the parking lot, shaking snow off his coat. He looked at the beer in her hand. He said nothing. He went to the cooler and got two sandwiches. Bread and cheese. The kind of sandwich that costs forty cents to make and tastes like bread and cheese.

"Hungry?" he asked.

She nodded. He handed her one.

They stood at the counter and ate in silence while the snow fell outside. The fluorescent lights hummed. The refrigerator clicked. Somewhere down the highway, a car drove by with its lights on.

The phone rang again. It was Mike, probably, or maybe nobody. Maybe just the wrong number. Maybe nothing.

They kept eating. The sandwich was fine. It was bread and cheese. It was enough.

Outside, the snow kept falling. It always does. In Columbus, in October, in March, in November. It falls and it melts and it falls again. The ground doesn't remember it. The cars don't remember it. The people don't remember it.

But it is there. It was there. It will be there tomorrow.

Amy finished her sandwich. Daniel finished his. They stood at the counter for a moment longer, not saying anything, listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights and the distant sound of traffic on the highway.

"See you tomorrow," Daniel said.

"See you tomorrow," she said.

He went back to his car. She stayed at the counter. The phone didn't ring again. The snow kept falling.

She locked the door at ten. She walked to Daniel's car in the snow. He was waiting in the driver's seat, the engine running, the heater on.

She got in. They drove home in silence. The white walls. The secondhand furniture. The refrigerator that clicked.

She went to her room. She sat on the edge of the bed. She thought about nothing at all.

Then she went to sleep. Tomorrow was Wednesday. She had work at the store. Daniel had classes. Mike might call. Or he might not.

The snow kept falling. The city kept going. That was all any of them could do.

Just keep going.

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport) The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED （BRN74685111） all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement. Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication. To contact author， please email to datatorent@yeah.net

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