in the hall and walked herself up into the cold, raftered attic of her house.
At which point, she got kicked in the chest again.
Sure, there were empty boxes, the lids unfolded, their bellies open. But there was also one that was closed up.
“Damn it.”
Still standing on the ladder, her body half in and half out of the attic, she told herself to keep with the plan. Get the empties and drop them down. Go to her closet. Organize.
Instead, she ascended the last three rungs, and went over to the box with the taped lid. Before she knew what she was doing—and thereby could block the impulse—her fingers pulled up the masking tape and popped the folded sleeves free.
The box was one of U-Haul’s wardrobe varieties, a dowel running across the top so that you could put hangers on it.
There was only one thing suspended within its four sides. Sometime in the last two years, the jacket to Gerry’s wedding suit had slipped off its hanger and slid down its matching slacks to pool in the bottom.
Sarah closed her eyes and sagged.
After he’d died, his parents had insisted on coming over from Germany to claim the body and visit the house which they had not yet seen in person. Sarah had invited them to go through Gerry’s things, thinking that they would want to keep a few of his belongings. She had left the house to give them some privacy—and returned an hour later to find that they had packed up all his clothes and anything that he had had with him through college.
She’d had the sense that his mother had viewed this as a service to Sarah. A way of tidying up the mess that his death had caused in all their lives.
The only thing the woman could have done to keep herself in one piece.
Sarah had known that he still had a few things at work, little mementos on his desk. She figured she would keep them, and then she had pictures on her phone, her computer. Her memories. Plus, how did you fight with someone’s mother over their socks, for godsakes.
So she had let it go, and they had taken everything with them, including his laundry out of the clothes hamper. She’d never forgot those suitcases they’d bought at Target. It had been kind of sad to think that all of Gerry’s worldly possessions could fit into three medium-sized Samsonites. Then again, he’d been a thinker. Possessions had not been a priority for him.
It had been a surprise a week later, then, to go into the closet in their bedroom and find his wedding suit tucked behind her one long dress, two dress blouses, and her own interview suit that she’d last had on when she’d come for an on-site visit to BioMed.
Gerry’s mom had missed the jacket and slacks because everything else of her son’s had been in his bureau outside.
Sarah had put the matching set away up here a couple days later. It wasn’t that she’d wanted to forget him. It was the wedding. The almost-made-it reality of that ceremony and reception had been too painful, although not because she was mourning the fact that they’d never made it to the altar due to his death.
It was more that she hadn’t been sure they were going to make it if he’d lived.
And so … up here.
In this box.
Hanging from a dowel on a Macy’s hanger.
She took the hanger out and smoothed the slacks. There had been a Black Friday sale the day after Thanksgiving, and she’d made him go to the mall with her to take advantage of the savings in the men’s department. He hadn’t even owned an interview suit. He’d gone to BioMed in jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt with a hole in the sleeve. Then again, when you were a genius and people were not hiring you for your sartorial sense, what did all the navy blue and the lapels and the pinstriped ties in the world matter.
Gerry could be odd. Disinterested in things other people normally did.
A pain in the ass, to be honest.
But God, his brain. He had had the most magnificent brain. And as she thought about what he had been like, she realized that his intelligence had been a huge part of his appeal to her. He’d been an outlier as sure as a male model was, an unusual combination of attributes that resulted in a spectacularly special human being.
Except boy, the shopping trip. That excursion had been the