“Make sure somewhere else.”
I almost laughed.
Walter squeezed my hand.
We married at three seventeen in the afternoon.
He died two days later.
Now I stood in his garage looking at the porch swing he had promised me when we were seventeen.
Then I noticed the wall.
Photographs.
Dozens.
No.
Hundreds.
Not of me.
That would have frightened me.
They were photographs of Walter’s life.
Joan.
Their wedding.
Babies.
Graduations.
Family vacations.
Walter holding grandchildren.
A woman I recognized as his mother, Eleanor, growing older from photograph to photograph.
His life was there.
Not erased.
Not replaced by me.
Then, on the opposite wall, was something else.
A wooden drafting table.
Rolled architectural plans.
Cardboard boxes.
A battered green suitcase.
And on the table, another brass key.
I touched the suitcase.
My name was written on the luggage tag.
MARGARET ELLIS.
My maiden name.
I stopped breathing.
“That was mine.”
