Still Warm

His shirts came out of the dryer still warm, which was the worst part.

She folded them the way he'd shown her: sleeves in first, then thirds, military-flat. Her mother had always done them differently. Two of us, two methods, all those years. She'd hated his fold. Now her hands did it automatically.

The blue one — the one he wore to fix the fence, to the hospital twice, to her graduation where he'd sweat through it by the keynote — she held it to her face. Not to smell it. That was gone. Three weeks was enough. She just held it the way you hold a phone when the call already ended and you haven't put it down yet.

It was a large. It sat on her like a tent. In the bathroom mirror she looked like a person wearing someone else's weather.

She left it on.

She went downstairs and made coffee and stood at the kitchen window watching the neighbor's dog cross the yard, unhurried, the way old dogs move when everything is already decided. She drank the coffee. She made another cup, which she hadn't planned to do.

She was still wearing the shirt.

She decided that was fine.