A few weeks after Jack’s death, Matt opened the door to the bedroom for the first time. It looked very small.

He brought a trash bag and a cardboard box. He tossed all the medicines and tissues and other reminders of Jack’s illness in the trash bag. In the box, he carefully placed the rest of Jack’s things, the clothes from the drawers, his watch and wallet and some jewelry and other things. He found a piece of scratch paper where Amanda and Jack had recorded the winnings from their cribbage games, Amanda way out in front. Matt put this into the box.

Without quite knowing what he was doing at first, Matt started to search the room, looking in the very back of the drawers of the bedside table, behind the headboard, potential little hiding places. He was looking for something that Jack might have left him, a note or a picture or something. It was exactly the kind of thing Jack would do. Matt could just see him, sitting in bed alone, thinking about Matt finding a little posthumous surprise and grinning his ass off. Matt could picture it perfectly, and it made the hollow place in his heart ache.

But Matt couldn’t find anything like that. Jack was gone.