I sat in my office with the hospital photograph in my hand until the sky outside the windows darkened.
Eventually Mrs. Pearl knocked.
“I made coffee.”
“I’m fine.”
“You haven’t eaten.”
“I’m fine.”
She opened the door anyway.
The cardboard box remained in her hands.
“What is that?”
“Things Mrs. Keaton asked me to give you after you read the envelope.”
Corinne.
She always been Corinne in this house.
But Mrs. Pearl placed the box on the desk before I could speak.
Inside were small things.
A spare nursery key.
Owen’s hospital identification bracelet.
A framed ultrasound image.
Our wedding album.
And the ivory roses I sent Corinne two months earlier.
They were dried now.
Brown at the edges.
“Why did she keep these?”
“Maybe because they meant something different to her than they meant to you.”
I told Corinne I was staying late at the office.
