Chapter 9: What She Gave Me

I went back to the hospice one last time.

Not as a volunteer.

Not officially.

I called ahead and the director, a woman named Patricia who had known Eleanor well, said of course, come whenever you like, and left it at that.

Eleanor’s room had been reassigned.

That was how it worked — it had to be.

But Patricia had saved a few things that had no next of kin to claim them.

A small stack of books.

The blue cardigan.

The ring from our wedding, which the nurses had kept safe in a labeled envelope in the administrative drawer.

I sat in the chair by the east window.

Someone else’s things were in the room now.

Someone else’s photographs on the small shelf.

But the chair was the same, and the window was the same, and the light came in at the same angle it always had on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.