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“And I have to make funeral arrangements. I have to go get clothes for him for the … I don’t know what arrangements he wants. I don’t know what his wishes are, I don’t know any of that. And my brother… I can’t… will my brother even be able to come to his father’s funeral? He’s being moved to a new hospital today, a place where he can finally get some help.”
She heads out of the kitchen and I follow her up the stairs.
We get to the top of the stairs and go left to a bedroom. There’s a banister all the way around with two bedrooms on one side of the staircase, one bedroom and a bathroom on the other. A window straight ahead looking out at the street.
We walk into the dark room. She flicks the light on. The room is dusty. Smells like an ashtray. There’s an almost overflowing ashtray on the table beside the bed with a package of cigarettes and a blue Bic lighter.
Smoking in bed. I shake my head at that.
The king-size bed takes up most of the room other than a dresser. She puts her hand on the closet doorknob and holds it.
“I never go in here. It’s always been the rule. I haven’t opened it since I was a kid and got yelled at for it. But I’ll need to take clothes to them for the funeral … he’s in his pajamas. I need to get out his suit.”
She stands there just holding the knob. Clearly she doesn’t want to open that door.
“Sit down. I’ll get it.”
“Why are you here, Austin?” she asks.
“Jada.” My voice and my face must betray my emotions. I feel like they do, but she stares at me blankly.
“I have to do it.” She turns away and twists the doorknob, but it takes a good minute before she finally pulls, like she’s mentally preparing to do something that’s expressly forbidden.
“Sweetheart, I can do it for you.”
“I have to do it,” she whispers and pulls it the rest of the way open.
It’s a stuffed to the brim standard clothing closet with boxes on the floor and on the shelf above the hanging rod.
Jada stares blankly and then starts flicking through the hanging clothes.
“He kept everything,” she whispers, flipping through women’s clothes. “My mom has been gone since I was a kid. She took a suitcase and that was it. I watched out the front window up here and saw her cross the street with that floral carpet suitcase. The rest of it’s still here.” She holds onto an orange and green floral sleeve and examines it for a long beat before she lets go of it and pulls out a dark suit under clear dry-cleaning wrap, a yellowed receipt on it making it obvious it was dry-cleaned and stored a long time ago.
She lays it across the bed and then pulls out a white shirt and a dark tie and puts them on the bed as well.
She pulls open a dresser drawer and hauls out a white t-shirt. Another drawer. Men’s briefs. Another: dark socks.
“I’ll have to look for his good shoes. You know, even doing his laundry I could put everything away except what needed to go in there. He never wanted me in there. I had to lay the stuff to be hung on the bed.”
She’s then flipping through papers in an off-white file folder that she’s pulled out of the sock drawer.
“Last will and testament of Richard Miller. He did one of those will kits. At least there’s that.”
She takes the stack of paper and sits on the foot of the bed beside the clothing and starts leafing through it.
I sit beside her.
“He had a life insurance policy. A little more than enough to cover the funeral, I guess.” She flips the page over. “I’m beneficiary.”
She’s flicking through more papers, confusion etched between her eyes, then she stops.
“What?” she whispers, then a horrible sound comes from her mouth, like it’s been yanked out of her. Papers flutter to the carpet in front of us.
I lean over and lift them, seeing an old newspaper clipping from the Connecticut Post stapled to other newspaper clippings.
The headline reads,
Jane Doe hit by car. Do you know this woman?
Underneath the stack of paper clippings, there’s a death certificate.
“Lindsay Ann Miller?” I say.
She takes it from me. Her fingers are trembling. She shakes her head while she reads.
I put my hand on the back of her neck and squeeze gently.
“Baby,” I whisper.
“Two years later. Two years? Why didn’t he tell us?”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” I squat in front of her.
She folds over and rocks a little, headbutting my chin, but she doesn’t even realize it. She’s suddenly sobbing.
“I thought she left and didn’t care. He let us think she just left and never gave us another thought.” She looks up at me, tears streaming. “Why?”
