“He bought that suit used, Norma,” I said. “It belonged to someone else first.”
“It belongs to us now,” she said.
She reached out and touched the outer plastic of the garment bag, her fingers lingering near where the embroidered leaves were hidden.
“He was proud of this suit,” she whispered.
“He was proud of you,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder and pulling her close.
By half-past six, the sun had slipped behind the maple trees at the end of our street. Norma stood on the front porch steps, the cardboard shoebox tucked securely under her arm as she prepared to walk down to the library.
“Do not stay past eight,” I said, leaning against the wooden porch railing.
“I won’t,” she said, though her feet were already turning toward the gravel driveway.
“And do not push yourself with that yard work tomorrow,” I added.
Norma stopped near the bottom step, her fingers tightening around the edge of the shoebox.
“Mrs. Clinton was crying in her office today,” Norma said suddenly, looking out toward the main road.
Mrs. Clinton was the high school principal, a woman who always wore her gray hair in a tight bun and spoke as if she were reading from a rule book.
“Why was she crying?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Norma said. “Kevin said she always gets like this around prom time. He said her brother went missing seven years ago, right around the second week of May.”
The date hit me like a cold hand on the back of my neck. Seven years ago, in the middle of May, was the exact week Joe had brought the black suit home in the middle of the night.
“I did not know she had a brother,” I said, my voice barely reaching the steps.
“Nobody talks about him,” Norma said, rubbing her heels together in the gravel. “He just left his car at the motel and disappeared.”
My silver ring felt tight on my finger, and I turned it twice, the metal cold against my skin.
“Your father never mentioned him,” I said.
