After the funeral, she had packed a few of her things in a cardboard suitcase and left the little house in town that she shared with Calla to ride out to the farm with Jim. Each day since, she had put off the things she had to do. Now she had to find a way to dispose of each comb and box and costume necklace that had belonged to Velma, the accumulated effects of a gentle and often impoverished woman who had burnished her few possessions with the care that renders simple things luminous.

Emaline had expected the task to be difficult, but she couldn’t find the strength to sift and sort her mother’s belongings, to take the things she or Ben or Bobby might want and leave the rest to Jim or to charity. The worst of it was the wardrobe, hung with her mother’s few dresses, thin from many washings. The summer dress, the winter dress, the dress for church that Velma wore in all seasons, the fancy dress she had not worn since her wedding. When Emaline opened the door to the wardrobe, she breathed her mother’s scent, fell to her knees, buried her face in the winter dress, inhaling it, helpless with grief. How did people do it? How did they dispose of these tangible remnants of a life? She could not bear to give the dresses away, nor could she live with them packed away in her own narrow closet.

She left the dresses for another time. In the bottom of the wardrobe, she found her mother’s old-fashioned high-button shoes, ordered from the Monkey Ward catalog and kept forever. She could see clearly the outline of Velma’s toes in the leather. Velma had few vanities, but she was proud of her small, dainty feet and well-turned ankles. The shoes were too small for Emaline to wear, but she couldn’t throw them away, not when farm women went through their lives with one good pair of shoes for church, wearing old brogans their sons had outgrown the rest of the week.

It was growing dark. She got up to light the kerosene lamp. Half an hour later, she saw headlights outside and heard the old Dodge Brothers truck grinding along the lane. The Lindquist brothers were back from their Saturday visit to the sale barn with Bobby. It was time to start supper.

Emaline spent the rest of the week getting ready to move back to Calla’s house, this time with Bobby. Calla’s husband had left her for a woman in North Platte. By renting a room to Emaline, Calla could just manage to keep up the mortgage payments on her house.