Page 94 of Out of the Storm

Gary paused only when he reached the last step, his hand resting atop the railing. “Uh, sure, yeah, come on up.”

There were only three rooms on the second floor: a small bathroom, what looked like it was supposed to have been an office but was mostly storage, and the main bedroom. Walking through the doorway into the bedroom, Gary’s nose wrinkled. He’d been right about the scent. It was stronger in here.

His throat tightened when he saw the bed—the covers pulled back, beige sheets crumpled and creased, pillow slightly indented. His father had slept here. He had slept here and climbed out of bed and hadn’t known that he’d never come back to it. Or,hadhe known? Had he been someone who had typically made the bed but had purposefully left it unmade this one last time because, well, why make the bed nice enough to climb into if you had the feeling that you were never coming back? Gary’s heart clenched. He supposed he’d never know.

Dazed, Gary reached out a hand, letting his fingertips touch the cold fabric of the pillowcase. He thought about lying down there for just a few minutes, about being able to experience a tiny bit of his dad’s life, but then he backed away. He couldn’t do it. Not with Jeff there.

Turning away from the bed, Gary’s eyes drifted around the room, stopping when they landed on the closed doors of the closet.

“I think I want to check the closet,” Gary said. “I still can’t believe the smell.”

“Do you want to take a couple of shirts home?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

He started walking toward the closet, each step a chore. But he felt Jeff behind him, lending him strength. He swallowed hard.

“It’s weird,” Gary began as he stopped just in front of the closet, “I spent years simultaneously missing him and hating him, but then, when I was in my twenties, I tried to forget about him. It wasn’t like Ireallyforgot him or anything, but I had successfully boxed everything related to him away for a while. Ironically enough, I’d kept them boxed up until receiving that box of my old childhood stuff a few months ago. When I saw one of the photographs in there...” Gary let out a long, dramatic breath. “Phew, boy, that was it. Every memory of him came rushing back to me. I felt weird for a while, and then I received the news from Dawn that cancer had taken him, and... well, now that I know he’s dead, I’m not really mad anymore. I’m mostly sad.” Gary opened the closet to reveal a row of mostly plaid shirts. “Probably because of what my sister implied with my mom potentially keeping him from me, but I think it’s more than that. I can’t seem to stop thinking about everything good.”

“Good times, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Were there a lot of them?”

“Oh, yeah, tons. I think.”

Gary started flipping through the shirts—checking one and then sliding the hanger over and then moving to the next—while Jeff waited nearby. Gary ended up taking a couple of them—blue and black, blue and gray, red and black—even though they’d probably be a little big. Maybe they could be bed shirts for the winter or something.

After choosing the shirts he wanted to keep, Gary laid them on the bed and then went back to the closet. There didn’t seem to be much else in there—no disorganized stacks of records or books or photo albums, no stashes of Christmas wrapping paper, no piles of papers. However, he did notice a small hatbox on the floor. He knelt down to inspect it, and when he moved to take off the lid,his heart started beating faster, worried that he’d find something terrible waiting inside. It was only a hatbox, but with its floral pattern, it seemed so strangely out of place in the mostly brown and beige bedroom.

Inside, there were envelopes. Many, many envelopes. Unsent letters?

Mostlyunsent, he realized, as he picked them up and began thumbing slowly through them.

There wasone, tucked way down at the bottom of the stack. As though to hide it. Shamefully.

It was addressed to him and to his sister.

And had been sent to his childhood home.

And then marked “Return to Sender.”

“Hey Jeff?” Gary said, pulling the letter out of the stack.

Jeff came over and knelt beside him. “What is it?”

Gary handed the letter to him. Wordlessly, Jeff turned it over in his hands before handing it back. And then Gary tore it open.

Dear Gary and Dawn,

Nope.

Gary ripped the letter in half.

Eyes blurring with tears, he tried to piece it back together.

Shoot.

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