Dead Echo

  *

  Patsy ripped open the first box, regretting already that she’d not marked them more carefully. Not just Kitchen or Living Room because, now, with all of them stacked nice and neat along the walls, one on top of the other, that just wasn’t enough. Looking around at just the boxes in here, it was hard to believe everything had been in the apartment. But this was it, all boxed up and filed away, her former life. Even now growing as musty as the smell that drifted out from the boxes after a month in storage. Funny how fast corruption set in. She pulled back the paper from one box and saw the dishes, pushed it back to a corner to inspect the next box. Finally, the kitchen utensils, the forks, spoons, ladles, measuring cups, knives, all the things to be neatly put away in the expansive drawers that lined the kitchen. Not because that’s what she was used to, back at the apartment everything had been thrown topsy-turvy wherever it happened to land. Here she wanted to make things different, organized, a new go at whatever came next. Because deep down she hadn’t a clue. Her life had always seemed a One Way, an endless streak from one disappointment to the next, and now, here she was again. A gambler trying to change her luck. And all on the money of the dead, the damned voice whispered. She tried to lock it out, tried not to think about the gun underneath the driver’s seat. She lifted the box to the kitchen island, clearing her mind of everything except the spoons, the knives, anything to take away that fucking voice that kept at her continuously.

  She’d wake up eventually, make this work, goddammit! With every ounce of strength, against every fragile and devastating doubt and grief, she was going to make this work. She owed it to the memory of her daughter. To John. To everything that had gone before. And for the next thirty minutes she unpacked the things slowly, carefully, tuning in to the gentle tinkling of silverware in the drawers, making everything else go away.