“YOU CAN take anything you want,” Phillip said roughly. His voice always had a tired edge to it now. I didn’t ask if the nightmares were back. “I’m sure some of it’s yours, anyway.”
I picked up a cardigan off the back of Ricky’s desk chair and folded it. “This is Jessa’s, actually,” I said, barely believing that he hadn’t been in her room even to pick up the mess strewn everywhere, but the room was like a time capsule; dirty laundry in the hamper, bed left unmade, a book held open next to her pillow by a pen stuck down the middle. “I’ll give it back to her parents for you. They’re donating whatever the girls don’t want to keep.”
Phillip nodded. “Thanks for doing this, Corey.” He awkwardly rubbed at the stump of his left shoulder, a habit that used to freak me out when I was younger. I knew it caused him pain now; sometimes a tingle or an itch he couldn’t scratch, sometimes the phantom pain of a bone splintering out of skin that no longer existed. In a T-shirt, the absence of his arm was even more noticeable than when he pinned an empty sleeve to his side.
I looked away guiltily, realizing I was staring again. “It’s no trouble,” I said, absently petting Jessa’s cardigan. “I helped the Fuenteses a few weeks ago.” The cardigan felt soft and cool, having sat unworn for months in this room. I tried to remember if I’d seen Ricky wearing it, if she had borrowed it for a special occasion, or if Jessa had simply forgotten it here—but nothing came to mind. It was too long ago.
A few of my things had been among Jessa’s when I helped her parents clean out her room, but not many. Much of the stuff I’d carried off in the cardboard box I’d taken home were things of hers, the things that her family didn’t mind me having. Pictures of the four of us, a book she’d promised to lend me, some clothes and things. Nothing of value, nothing that Jessa’s little sisters would want later.
The cardigan would make its way into Mary-Ellen’s closet, or else a donation bin. I smoothed out Ricky’s comforter and placed it on her bed, starting a pile of things I’d take with me. I would take it to the Fuenteses the next time they invited me for dinner, which was often.
“You can have anything you want,” Phillip reminded me again. “I don’t have any use for… clothes and things. Makeup. Shoes.” He leaned against the doorway, not crossing the threshold. “If you find any pictures, I would want to—I mean, you can have copies, but—”
“Of course,” I said smoothly, opening the jewelry box on Ricky’s night table. In it were some things of her mother’s: a cross on a delicate chain, a pair of gold earrings, a few tarnished rings. I took out a tangle of bracelets; some of them were homemade, beads strung by Kate or Jessa or myself. Those I added to Jessa’s cardigan on the bed.
“Friendship bracelets,” I said, looking toward the doorway, but Phillip had disappeared. I could hear his heavy steps heading toward the kitchen.
From Ricky’s closet I took a few items of clothing I wanted to keep. Some T-shirts, a pair of ripped jeans, and the baggy sweater with the elbow patches I liked; we didn’t have a similar style, although we were about the same size. Cautiously, I poked through the fancier side of her closet, passing dress after dress I’d never seen her wear. Pink and lacy things, for weddings and parties I didn’t attend. I was looking for something to wear to court, something nice. The prosecutor mentioned my jeans and T-shirts every time I saw him, reminding me time and again that juries don’t like “average” teenagers. I needed to dress for my IQ, look studious and not like a slouch.
Phillip reappeared in the doorway. I pulled a respectable-looking beige skirt from the back of the closet. The pleats in the front were fastidiously ironed in straight lines I’d never have been able to replicate if I were the one washing it.
“May I borrow this?” I asked, holding it up.
“You can have it,” he said.
“I won’t need to keep it… I just need something respectable for the trial.”
Phillip’s brow furrowed a little, but he shrugged his one shoulder absently, nearly spilling the cup of tea in his hand. “You always look respectable, Corey. You’ve grown into a very respectable young woman.” He awkwardly looked down at his tea and took a huge gulp, probably burning his mouth.
I glanced down at myself, dressed in a baggy flannel shirt of my father’s thrown over a Batman T-shirt and jeans. “Juries are picky, I guess,” I said, thinking of Mr. Haywood’s words. “And if I’m going to be a piece of evidence, I have to be one they can trust.”
Phillip stepped into the room and put his tea down on the desk. It was a small space; he barely had to take two of his huge steps in order to lay his hand on my shoulder. “You’re going to do great,” he said gruffly, his voice low and hollow, as though it came right out of his chest. His hand was heavy on my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter what you wear, or even what you say. The jury is going to know they can trust you. You’re a good girl.”
“Ricky was a good girl too,” I said, and his hand clenched down on my shoulder for a fraction of a second before Phillip let go and pulled it back, stuffing it in the front pocket of his jeans. “I just want to do right by her.”
Ricky’s father nodded solemnly, and then looked at the skirt in my hands. “You sure that won’t be too short?” he joked. He sounded so fatherly I couldn’t help but smile as I held it to my waist, where it hung to my knees. It would’ve been shorter on Ricky, who was all legs. “No, you’re right. That’s the perfect thing.” He sounded sad. How often would he be able to judge a skirt for appropriate length now that his little girl was gone?
My smiled dropped. I added the skirt to the few things I wanted to keep for myself. “I’ll give it back after the trial,” I said. “I’m just borrowing it.”
“Keep it for as long as you need.” Phillip picked up his mug again, looking around the room. “This place is an absolute pigsty. For a girl who I taught how to make hospital corners, she sure was a mess.” He sounded incredibly fond as he ran his fingers along her bookcase, which had accumulated a layer of dust in her absence.
“We all were, I think. I’m still a mess.” I put the things I was going to take in a bag I’d brought and then set about sorting the rest into piles of “keep” and “give away.” Every object that got put into the “give away” pile was like a stone falling into my stomach, hard and obstructive.
Some teenaged girls were going to buy Ricky’s things from the thrift store and never know the girl who had so lovingly hung her collection of skirts in order of length or color or, once, alphabetically by store. Obsessive, I’d called it then. Joked about it. Laughed. It felt wrong taking her things out of the order she’d so meticulously kept them in. How she could stand her room being such a mess when her closet was so neat I’d never know.
“Thanks for doing this,” Phillip said again, from the doorway, where he’d once again set up vigil with his mug of tea. I could see, in the set of his jaw, the military-straight back, and the clench of his fist around the mug’s handle, why some people were intimidated by him; I could also see the man who sat a tiny seven-year-old Ricky on his lap for bedtime stories, sewed a sparkly patch onto the ripped knee of her favorite pair of jeans in the fourth grade, and braided her hair every morning for years with only one hand. I was not scared of this man, straight-backed in the doorway. I felt incredibly sorry for him, for his compounded loss of limb, wife, and now daughter.
“Thanks for letting me” is what I responded this time, feeling the weight of the words in my chest. I was thankful to be here, thankful to be able to help. Having my hands all over Ricky’s things was a bit like touching her again; the clothes still smelled like her, even after all this time.