I made the mistake of looking at him and saw a glimpse of vulnerability and tenderness there, neither one an emotion I wanted to associate with my brother-in-law. I quickly looked away and pushed open the bedroom door.
The bed had been neatly made, a homemade quilt in the blues and greens of the ocean neatly tucked under the wooden slats on the side of the pencil-post bed. A small corner of Loralee’s leopard-print nightgown stuck out from where it had been folded behind a pillow. On the bedside table next to a roll of antacids was what appeared to be a journal, covered in hot-pink vinyl. I imagined that the pages would be mostly blank, Loralee using them only to record what she wore each day so she wouldn’t repeat an outfit.
A neatly arranged array of cosmetics sat in gilded attention on the dressing table. I was in the middle of squinting at the tubes and jars to see whether there was something I might recognize when I was distracted by Gibbes opening the closet door.
The closet was oddly shaped, and jutted out from a corner of the room like a gaudy piece of oversize furniture, having apparently been carved from the bedroom in an attempt at modernization. I’d noticed this with all the bedrooms, and wondered whether the construction of closets in the last century or so had been the last time the house had undergone any updates.
Loralee’s suitcases had been neatly stacked in the back of the closet, their contents apparently emptied and hung with military precision on the single rod. Multiple shoes, all with high heels, were lined up in rows in front of the suitcases.
But above the rod was a deep shelf the width of the closet with piles of boxes that went up to the twelve-foot ceiling, stacked in three rows of varying widths.
“Looks like she kept everything,” he said out loud, although I wasn’t sure he was speaking to me. Turning around to look at the bed, he said, “I don’t think she changed anything at all.”
“That’s not such a bad thing,” I said, tucking the leopard nightgown out of sight.
He paused to look at me. “Because . . . ?”
I blushed, having no excuse for why I would have blurted that out. I wasn’t one to share my family’s dirty laundry, especially with this man. We might share the same last name, but he was a stranger to me.
I shrugged, pretending to straighten the pillows on the bed. “When I left for college, my father sold the house I’d grown up in and moved into a small condo. He got rid of everything—furniture, Christmas decorations, clothing. Even sheets and blankets.”
“And your mother let him?”
I felt light-headed for a moment, the bruise of my mother’s loss still as fresh as the day she’d died. “She died when I was twelve.”
He considered me for a moment. “My mother died when I was five. Cal would have been fifteen. It was hard. I don’t think it matters how old you are when you lose a parent; you still feel like you’ve lost a limb.”
I stared back at him, recalling how I’d told my father the same thing after my mother’s funeral. And how ever since I’d limped through my life as if I’d been walking on a phantom leg. I quickly turned back to the closet. “You’re welcome to any of the boxes up on the shelf. Leave what you don’t want and I’ll sort through them to give away or toss. I can’t imagine there’s anything I’ll need.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
I stepped toward him just as he raised his hand to point at an unmarked corrugated box. I caught myself before I uttered a sound, but my body, honed by instinct, flinched as I covered my face with my arm.
He dropped his hand quickly, his eyes searching mine.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping back and lowering my gaze, suddenly aware of how much his eyes resembled Cal’s.
He didn’t say anything, but I felt him watching me. I walked toward the door and flipped on the electric switches, the overhead light and fan turning on. “It’s so hot in here,” I said, waving my hand in front of my face.
“You’d probably be a lot cooler if you weren’t wearing long sleeves.”
I looked down at my blouse, wondering how long I’d been dressing in beige. And why I still did.
The surge of anger was unexpected, and I knew I had to get out of the room. Ignoring him, I said, “Put the boxes you want in the hallway so we can keep it all together. I’m going ahead to Owen’s room to make sure it’s presentable.”
“Oh, it is,” he said, turning back to the closet.
I found his matter-of-fact attitude annoying. “How would you know?”
“In my experience, most children who’ve lost a parent tend to go overboard with their best behavior so their other parent doesn’t leave, too.”