Two Washes
The memorial card was damp from the morning dew on the pavement.
I picked it up near the payment machine at the entrance to my car wash. Small. White. A little smaller than a playing card. The kind they hand out at funerals, with a prayer on the back.
I turned it over.
There was a photograph on the front.
A woman. About eighty. White hair, soft and curled. Pearl earrings. A little smile, like she knew a joke she wasn’t going to tell you.
The same woman I had just seen sitting in the passenger seat of a silver Buick LeSabre. Five minutes ago. Smiling at me through the windshield while the old man paid for two washes.
Underneath her picture, in thin gray letters:
In Loving Memory
Irene Kowalski
April 3, 1946 – December 12, 2025
December.
Six months ago.
I stood there in the parking lot of Bright Shine Car Wash with that card in my hand and looked toward the road where the Buick had disappeared. Route 4 was empty. Just the morning traffic going by. A semi. A school bus. A pickup with a ladder in the back.
No silver Buick.
And for the first time in my forty-six years, I wondered whether I’d actually seen what I thought I’d seen.
My name is Kevin Dorsey.
I’ve managed Bright Shine Car Wash on Route 4 outside Dayton, Ohio, for almost fifteen years. It’s not a big place. One automatic tunnel. Four self-serve bays. Six vacuum stations. A little office with a coffee maker that’s older than my daughter and a window that looks out over the lot.
The owner is a man named Phil who lives in Florida and calls me twice a year. Once at Christmas. Once when the water bill goes up.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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