The old shack had been there as long as anyone could remember.  Always looking like something from an old movie and like it belonged in a museum.  It never changed, save the occasional alteration in grass length out the front which was the work of old Nell, the grey mare, who was occasionally tied up out the front.  In summer the sun rose and set causing shadows all around.  The same shadows year after year.  In winter the snow fell and covered the whole place, sometimes almost turning it into a little white hill rather than a house.

It was a house too.  It was hard to think that Cranky old Stan had lived in it forever.  He had always seemed to be there.  No-one in town ever remembered anyone else living there, Stan had just always been there, and always cranky as far as anyone could recall.  It was one of those things that just was, no-one questioned it, no-one tried to find out about it, no-one tried to fix it.  Maybe they had once, and after getting the same old Cranky Stan responses, perhaps they had given up.  Maybe no-one had ever asked.

Stan would drive the old pick up into town once a week.  He’d get essentials at the general store and sometimes gas at the station, although he was rarely seen driving anywhere else so it was hard to imagine he needed gas that often.  Sometimes people wondered, mostly they didn’t.  They just went about their business and left him to his, which seemed to be the way he liked it.

So when Stan died, his story died with him, and no-one ever knew.  They didn’t know that his mother died when he was too young to remember her, that his father raised him alone.  He met a girl in high school and married her because he loved her with all his heart and every cell in his body.  She was barely pregnant with their child when she died in car accident.  He could always remember the moment his heart broke and his world stopped.  Nothing seemed worth anything after that, and Stan never got over it.  He worked the farm with his dad until his father died and then he worked it alone.

Lillian had died by the side of the road on a Tuesday.  Every Tuesday since, Stan had driven 80 miles to the very spot.  He went in the dead of night so nobody knew.  He sat by the road and cried every Tuesday.  Then he drove home.

Cranky old Stan, a tragic life, a tragic sadness he chose not to share.  What if he had shared?  What if?