“Dad, wait.”
I was already walking toward the bedroom. My footsteps were steady on the hardwood Martha and I had refinished together one summer twenty years ago, sanding the boards by hand, drinking lemonade from mason jars while Tiffany played in the backyard under the cottonwood tree.
The suitcase came down from the shelf. I had bought it for the Yellowstone honeymoon. It had been waiting in that closet ever since, carrying the weight of what it had once represented.
I packed the way a man packs when he knows what he is doing. Underwear. Socks. Three changes of clothes. My medication in the inside pocket. My reading glasses in their case. The small leather journal where I kept financial records.
From the dresser, I took the framed photograph of Martha at Flathead Lake, standing in the blue sweater with one hand holding down her hair against the wind, the smile she had in photographs of moments she had not arranged. I wrapped it in tissue paper.
From the living room came the sound of urgent whispering, Harry’s voice rising above Tiffany’s in the way it always did when he was trying to establish the terms of something.
