It was crazy. Bree held up a button-down she could have sworn he’d had even back when she was in college. “This one has been worn out for ten years.”

“You know your father.” Her mom smiled, and it was oddly fond, as if now that he was gone, she could pretend there was something to miss.

In the bureau, there was a slew of new shirts, still with the tags on them. “He didn’t want to use them until the others were worn out,” her mother explained.

Bree excavated another drawer. Her heart simply stopped beating. She hadn’t seen that particular shirt in a long time. It was far older than the others, from her middle school days, maybe even elementary school. Later, he’d started wearing khaki shirts because he’d gotten a great deal on a dozen, but this was a blue chambray workshirt, his name stenciled across the breast pocket, and faint grease stains her mother had never been able to wash out. It still smelled like him, motor oil mixed with a cheap drugstore aftershave. She didn’t want to close her eyes. If she did, she’d see him wearing it. If she did, she’d see him standing over her. She’d smell him.

She shoved it down into the trash bag.

“Bree, that one’s still got some life left in it.”

There was something still living in it, but not what her mother thought. “It’s covered with grease. No one wants that.”

“It would be good for a working man.”

She looked at her mother, steeling her features. “It’s going in the trash, Mom.” She stood, marched down the hall, and out the back door by the garage where the trash bins were kept. Throwing the bag inside, she slammed the lid down again. If her mother wanted to dig in the garbage for the shirt, fine.

Back in the bedroom, afraid of the memories, she simply could not paw through one more drawer. “I’ll do the bathroom.”

Bree threw out his toothbrush, his razors, that damn aftershave, and the male deodorant. She tossed the leftover medications into a baggie, then added the ones off the bedside table. Looking it up on the Internet, she found they could be dropped off at any pharmacy for disposal. She’d take them tomorrow.

Her mom had moved on to the closet where her father kept his better clothes, the polo shirts and Dockers, his shoes. Every bag her mom filled, Bree carried out to the garage and slung it into the trunk of the family car. When that was full, she started tossing them in her own trunk. They could take them to the Goodwill tomorrow.

With each new bag, they seemed to work faster, harder, barely talking, except for Bree asking if her mom wanted to keep this or that. She wondered what a psychiatrist would make of their mania.

In the den, they got rid of his reading glasses, the sportsmen’s magazines, Popular Mechanics, detective novels.

“I’ll get someone to take that chair.” Her father’s chair. “It’s disgusting and dirty.” Her mom wrinkled her nose at the age-old stains, mustard, whiskey, the things he’d spilled. She grabbed a flowered flat sheet from the hall linen closet, threw it over the chair and tucked it down until it didn’t look like his chair anymore. “There, at least it’s covered up.”

Eyes vividly alive, her mom said, “Let’s do the kitchen.” She led the way. “I hate whiskey.” She dumped the bottle’s contents down the drain. Then the Southern Comfort and the tequila. But she waved her hand at the bourbon and the rum. “I’ll keep those for bread pudding sauce.” She also made a mean rum cake.

They tossed out his sugary cereals. Her mom liked Raisin Bran, Corn Flakes, plain oats. “I hate blue cheese dressing.” Almost with a sense of glee, she added that to the full kitchen trash. “And anything with curry.” She made a face. She’d cooked curried beef with apples and raisins every Thursday night for the last forty years, but out went the curry powder, too.

It was as if they were purging the house of every trace of him.

“The sheets,” her mom said. So they traipsed back to the bedroom to tear the bed apart. His pajamas were still under his pillow. They didn’t wash anything, just threw it all in the trash, as if his scent would never come out of the cotton and her mother couldn’t bear having the sheets on her bed again. She hadn’t even mentioned putting them in the Goodwill bags versus the rubbish bin.

“They smell like death,” she whispered.

They smelled like old man and bad memories, Bree agreed.

When the trash cans were full and so were the trunks and backseats of both their cars, all that remained of Bree’s father was the oxygen tank and the hospital bed he’d died in. Once hospice picked it all up, he’d be gone completely, no reminders.

“We need a cup of coffee after all that work,” her mom said, as if they’d been spring cleaning instead of erasing every scrap of her dead husband’s existence.

Minutes later, sitting at the kitchen table over a freshly brewed mug, her mom beamed suddenly. “Let’s have tacos for dinner.”

Bree’s father had hated Mexican food. He’d liked standard American fair, meat, potatoes, and a vegetable, that was it.

“I’ll go out and get some taco shells,” Bree offered.

“Sour cream and salsa, too,” her mom added. “And one of those taco seasoning mixes.”

He was dead, he was gone. They were doing things he hadn’t allowed, like having Mexican food for dinner. Then her mother was up again, as if she had ants in her pants and couldn’t sit still. She pulled the stepstool out of the broom closet.

“What are you doing?” Bree asked as her mom set the stool beneath a bank of high kitchen cabinets.

“I want my cookie jars.” The jars Bree’s father hadn’t allowed on the counter all at the same time.

When they’d emptied the cupboards, the countertop was a jumbled mess, cookie jars in the shapes of Cinderella and Popeye between the toaster and coffeemaker, a snowman next to the flour and sugar canisters. A fat chef with a black mustache, Mother Goose, a bright red fire hydrant, a gingerbread house. And Dumbo the elephant. Her father had hated that one, saying it was a stupid shape because all the cookie crumbs fell down into Dumbo’s legs. Which was true, but Dumbo was brightly colored and had the kindest painted eyes.

Together, she and her mother stared at the crowded counter. “Maybe you can put your flour and sugar in the cookie jars, to give you more room,” Bree suggested.

“I’ll think about it.” Yet her mother wore a sneaky smile, as if she was calculating how many more cookie jars she could buy now that her husband was dead.

Later, by the time they were eating tacos with salsa and sour cream on TV trays in the den and watching Antiques Roadshow on PBS, even the hospital bed was gone, having seemingly disappeared into thin air while Bree drove to and from the grocery store for the second time that day.

Yet, as Sunday evening wore on, the essence of her father lingered, his aftershave in the bathroom though she’d trashed the bottle, his body odor on the chair despite its new covering, his ghostly shadow flickering on the TV screen, but gone when she turned her head. There was even the odd echo of his demanding voice in the single heartbeat as a show faded to black before the commercials started.

Unlike her mother, she didn’t feel free of him.

She wondered if she ever would.

“Fine.” Over the phone, Bree’s voice was distant, flat.

Or maybe it was the darkness outside. It was after ten on Sunday night, a lonely hour. This morning had been a lifetime ago. Luke wondered what had happened during the hours since she’d left him. “Have you and your mom set a date for the service?”

“I told you, we’re cremating him, so there’s no service.”

“You can still have a memorial.”

“He didn’t know anyone that would want to come.”

That was harsh, but it was the reaction he would have expected if the suspicions he’d considered this morning were correct. “The memorial is for you and your mom.” It was for the living, not the dead. Maybe it would help Bree let go emotionally.

“My mom doesn’t have anyone, either.”

Everyone had someone. Didn’t they? But he figured pressing would only push Bree further away. He’d met her mother once, that was all. He didn’t know what her reaction would be to anything. If something had happened to Bree when she was younger, wouldn’t the mother have known? Who could say for sure?

“How’s your mom?” he asked.

“She’s fine.” Then she laughed, a rough sound before she cut it off. “We cleaned out all his things.”

“Today?” They hadn’t even scattered the ashes yet. No service, now cleaning his things out the day he’d died. Bizarre. Then again, it could be a catharsis, what they’d needed to do together. Who was he to judge the right or wrong of it?

“She needed it,” was all Bree said.

“What about you?”

She took forever to answer. He counted the long seconds with each heartbeat.

“I want to go home,” she whispered. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No.” He believed in things he could touch, see, and feel.

“I’m afraid to turn out the light.”

“He’s not there, Bree,” he murmured for comfort.

“There’s a place he might be.”

“Where?”

Again, she didn’t answer for a long time. “Just somewhere.”

His stomach sank. Jesus. It was true. Yet he still prayed his suspicion was wrong despite the fact that it supplied an answer to so many questions about her. “Then don’t go there.” He waited.

“You’re right,” she finally said. “I don’t have to go there anymore.”

“No, you don’t. I’ll come by and see you tomorrow after work.”

He expected her to fight him, but she simply said, “Okay.”

By the time she’d hung up, he still hadn’t figured out how to reach her, not emotionally at least. Except for a few brief glimpses inside her mind, there was still only the sexual way. He was starting to wonder if that was actually the worst way for her.

“She looks sick,” Yvonne whispered too loudly. Yvonne always whispered too loudly, but Bree didn’t look up.

“She’s just pale.” Rachel differed in her assessment. “She looks like she hasn’t slept, but I don’t think she’s sick.”

Bree had arrived at eleven, an hour later than normal, the new normal versus the old normal. She’d said she had to drop off some things on her way to work.

“She’s acting kinda weird,” Yvonne said.

“Weird how?”

“Too quiet.”

“Yvonne,” Rachel said, exasperated, “she’s always quiet.”

“But this is a weird quiet.”

“Her father’s dying. That would make anyone act weird.”

“Did she say how he’s doing?”

“No.” Bree hadn’t said much of anything, except to explain why she was an hour late. Although dropping stuff off wasn’t much of an explanation.

“I mean, most people would tell you the situation and everything. I think Erin should ask her if everything’s okay.”

It wasn’t like Yvonne not to do her own asking. She was a tall woman, at least six feet, and big-boned would be the best word to describe her. Her caramel skin was unlined despite the fact that she was somewhere in her fifties—exactly how old, Rachel couldn’t say, but she’d be a grandmother come July. Yvonne didn’t so much love to gossip as she worried about everyone in the office as if they were her chicks. But today, for whatever reason, she didn’t know how to approach Bree.

“I’ll talk to her,” Rachel finally said.

“Yeah, you have rapport.”

Before Christmas, Yvonne had gotten bent out of shape over that supposed rapport. After all, Rachel had worked at DKG only a few months and Yvonne had been there forever. In the last couple of weeks, though, Yvonne had gotten over the jealousy. Maybe it was the grandchild. She had other things to occupy her mind.

Bree looked up at Rachel’s tap on the doorframe. She blinked, as if she needed a moment to refocus.

“I finished all the invoicing and everything you gave me on Friday,” Rachel told her.

“Yes. Thanks. I was just checking it all. You did a good job.” Bree’s voice was totally without inflection.

Rachel ventured a few steps inside the office. “Thank you. I can do more, whatever you need.” Then she decided it was silly to make small talk and avoid what she really wanted to say. “How did the weekend go at home? Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

Bree was already so fair-skinned that it was hard to say she could actually lose any more color. Maybe it was her bloodless lips that gave the impression, and the fact that she wasn’t wearing lipstick. She seemed to take a long time to decide what to say, then finally, “I’m fine. The weekend was”—she paused for a slow, thoughtful blink—“difficult.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel empathized. “I know how hard it must be.” Not really. Her parents were both still living. She’d never lost anyone close. She’d certainly never had to watch anyone die. But she only had to think of losing someone to get a queasy feeling. It was the same way she’d felt about Erin losing her son; all she had to do was imagine it and she felt sick to the very pit of her stomach.

“Thank you,” Bree said, her fingers poised over her keyboard as if she couldn’t wait for Rachel to get out.

“If you need to talk, we can go out for lunch.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Bree said slowly as if she were carefully picking her words, “but I have to get this stuff done since I was late.”

“Oh yeah, sure.” Rachel’s feelings weren’t hurt. She had a thicker skin than Yvonne did. She just wished she could do something for Bree, be her friend, but the girl didn’t share much. Rachel had never met anyone quite so closed down.

Then Bree, almost as a concession, pushed some invoices across the desk. “These were in the mail if you want to enter them.”

“Sure.” At least it was something Rachel could do to help.

Yvonne accosted her almost the moment she was out of sight of Bree’s door. “What’d she say?”

“She said she’s fine.”

“She lying. I can tell. We need to do something.”

“There’s only so much pushing we can do, Yvonne. We offer, then we have to wait.” It was sort of like putting out food for a feral cat. You set down the bowl, then you backed off and let it come to you when it was ready. If it was ever ready. Funny, she figured Bree for the kind that would never be ready.