White Widow

the long version

Jack T. Oliver has a simple, quiet life. He and his wife, Loretta, live in a cozy little house in Corpus Christi. Jack has a job he loves as a driver for the Great Western Trailways bus line, on an easy route, Schedule 726, Galveston to Corpus Christi. Back and forth in a day. In a few weeks, Jack is going to be promoted to Master Operator in recognition of his years of perfect service and on-time driving. It's a good life. Until a White Widow boards his bus, on a one-way ticket from Victoria to Corpus Christi. A White Widow is a wild card, a woman traveling alone who can change the course of a driver's life, and not always for the best. Some bus drivers never meet one, but one is all it takes. What happens when Jack Oliver's White Widow passes through his life is as unforgettable as it is irrevocable. Jack has never seen her before. He never has a conversation with her, and touches her only once, to help her up the steps into his bus. He never learns her name. And he falls completely, passionately, irrationally in love with her. Within weeks, he loses everything he has, a few things he never had, and some he never thought about until they were gone.