“Dad was always quiet about the people who stayed there,” Norma said, her voice fading as she stepped down onto the driveway.
She turned and began her walk down the street, her small figure moving quickly under the branches of the old oaks.
I stood on the porch, watching her go, the shoebox of bills pressed against her side like a shield against the town.
The first streetlamp flickered on at the corner, casting long, thin shadows across the gray gravel. I looked back at the front door, thinking of the dark suit hanging inside the closet, and the quiet man who had brought it home to me.
I wondered what else Joe had kept hidden in the quiet of those long night shifts.
I watched my daughter walk down the street under the fading light, clutching her shoebox of bills.
The champagne-colored fabric caught the late afternoon sun when Norma unzipped the protective cover. The dress was polyester, smelling of dry cleaning solvent and new carpet, but Norma held it up against her shoulders with both hands as if it were silk.
“It has real sequins along the collar, Mom,” she said, her voice rising with that quick, breathless eagerness that always made me think of Joe. “The lady at the boutique said they were hand-applied in Chicago.”
She stood by the kitchen window, her heels clicking together on the floorboards as she swayed. On the table behind her sat the metal shoebox, its lid open, showing the neat piles of ones and fives she had saved from her babysitting jobs since September.
“It is beautiful, Norma,” I said, reaching out to touch the hem.
My fingers stopped an inch away from the shiny synthetic material. A coldness seemed to rise from the dress, though the May sun was hitting the glass pane behind her.
“Bob’s sister said I can start on her back garden tomorrow,” Norma said, her fingers tracing the neat plastic teeth of the zipper. “She has three years of dead lilac brush behind her garage that needs clearing before the ground gets too hard.”
“That is too much heavy lifting for a seventeen-year-old,” I said, adjusting the thin silver band on my ring finger.
