“Who wouldn’t?” Quinn asked.
She drank a long sip from her water glass, savoring the coolness on her throat. She hadn’t given up beer but was trying to be more aware of why she drank it. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts, Jay had told her. The only way through this is through it.
She sighed a shaky breath. “But mostly Jay just listens. Sometimes he asks questions that challenge me. Sometimes I get angry, or just cry.”
“What kind of questions?”
Cassidy paused. “I guess I’m hard on myself, so he tries to get me to see when I’m doing it.”
Hours later, after they washed and dried the dishes, Quinn steadied her with a look. “Ready to do this?” he asked.
Cassidy ran a hand through her long hair and pictured the piles of Pete’s things in her garage waiting for them. “No,” she said.
After her solo ski trip, she had returned home to find everything just as she had left it, with Pete’s spare razor resting on the sink, his laptop waiting on the edge of the kitchen table, his books still crowding her bookshelves. Something had snapped in her, and though she had been exhausted from the drive, a surge of energy had taken over. The next thing she knew she had moved all of his things into the garage. Waking the next morning to have all trace of him vanished sent her into a tailspin. Jay had helped her work through it, but the idea of having to go through all of his things again and sort them was too much. Thankfully, Quinn, who had planned a visit for her birthday, had jumped at the chance to help. “Kind of a shitty birthday present, though,” he had said. “Maybe we should go to Hawaii instead.” But she knew that putting off the task would only prolong its hold on her.
“Do you remember when Pamela went through all of Dad’s things without us after he died?” Quinn asked.
“Yeah,” Cassidy said. “At least I got to keep his desk, and I still have his World War Two books.”
“I got his watch, but only after I reclaimed it from the pile she had set aside for Reeve.”
“I didn’t know you stole it.”
“Stole it? No way was I going to let her give it to him. He would have hawked it in a flash. This is Swiss precision, here,” he said, flashing the silver timepiece on his wrist. “They don’t make them like this anymore.”
They shared a moment in silence. Cassidy recalled Reeve’s visit. “Is he in jail again?” Cassidy asked.
“I think so. I’m sure that getting hauled off your property violated his parole.”
Cassidy knew she was stalling, and sighed to combat her rising sense of dread.
Quinn stepped close and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Her body went very quiet. Being physically close to anyone still felt strange. She remembered her craving for Mark at the memorial and wondered if the sensation would always linger. Even though she felt less ashamed of it now, it was still so hard to make sense of everything that was going on inside her.
“C’mon,” Quinn said.
Reluctantly, Cassidy followed him to the coat hook by the back door where they zipped into down jackets and wool hats before stepping into the garage.
Inside the space, the chilled air tasted of mildew and motor oil. Foil-wrapped insulation panels wove through the studs against the wall bordering the house, contrasting with the other two bare plywood walls. Pete’s Jetta took up two-thirds of the space. His things filled the remaining floor area.
Quinn had labeled the four boxes he had foraged from the appliance store in town: KEEP, DONATE, GOODWILL, FRIENDS. Cassidy felt a heaviness shift inside her, as if her body was filling with water that sloshed and pulled her down as she moved.
Quinn sighed forcefully next to her. “Where should we start?”
The words stuck like mud in her brain, and she managed to produce only a low, shallow puff of air. Cassidy wiped her eyes, her gaze sweeping over the items in the middle of the floor: the drawers of Pete’s dresser, stacked on top of each other like Jenga blocks, his bike against the wall and his tool kit, ski gear, a soccer ball, a pile of shoes, a framed book poster signed by the author, stacks and stacks of books, an unpacked box of his winter clothes, a mound of kitchen items.
“What are you going to do about his car?” Quinn asked.
Pete had no attachment to cars the way some people did. He bought it for $1000 bucks, put a roof rack on it and chains in the trunk and called it good. But still, many memories of their time together were tied to that car.
“There are non-profits that take donations. Want me to find out?” Quinn said.
Cassidy gave him a look of gratitude. “Would you?”
“You bet,” he said with a nod. He stepped forward and nudged the pile of shoes with his toe. “I had no idea Pete had such a thing for shoes. Did he ever throw his old ones out?”
Cassidy smiled, but her lips quickly tightened in a grimace as a wave of sadness overtook her. “He said his old running shoes all had stories to tell. He thought of them as friends.”
“I get that, though I don’t keep my old shoes around. They only last me a few months, anyways.”
“That’s because you run a hundred miles a week.”
He gave her a look, then returned his attention to the shoes. “So, would it be safe to say you don’t need these? Moving them out would certainly improve the air quality in here.”
Cassidy took a deep breath. “Yeah,” she said.
Quinn picked up a pile of the shoes and placed them in the DONATE box.
Cassidy selected a pair, her breath fast and high in her chest as a memory played in her mind of Pete lounging in the grass outside their house after a long run.
“C’mon, Cass,” Quinn said, giving her a compassionate but stern look. “We can do
