After the funeral, Dad had demanded more from and of me than I could have imagined. Lil was back at summer school at Auburn University, and everything moved too quickly and too slowly all at once. Two weeks later, while packing up Mother’s closet, I was sleep-deprived and restless. For the first time in my life, I was alone in her dressing room. Yet she was everywhere—inside that room, inside my heart, inside my head. Just everywhere.

For all her instruction, words, and lectures, Mother had never once told me what to do with her things when she died. She’d told me how to feel, where to go, and even whom to marry, yet never what to do at that moment.

I’d arranged her clothes by color and use, packed them in boxes and bins, labeled for the Junior League Newly New store. I’d thought I would take some pieces—the St. John suits, the Prada shoes, the Chanel dresses—but I didn’t. Not only because they wouldn’t fit Lil or me, but because they seemed disconnected from my life. These things of my mother’s were not of or for or about me in any way. I hadn’t expected this feeling of not wanting my mother’s things; I’d needed my mother in different ways and in so many times that I would’ve guessed I’d cling to her leftovers as I’d clung to her.

Finally I knelt before the locked bottom drawer of her built-in dresser. Her formal ball gowns, which hung in thick plastic coverings, dangled like the multicolored jewels on her charm bracelet: red, blue, bright orange. I held the key Dad had given me. He’d said, “This is the key to your mother’s locked drawer. Please take care of everything. I can’t bear to see or touch her things. Can you please deal with it?” Then he’d gone off to play golf with Rusty.

I flipped the key back and forth between my hands. I wanted to feel everything and be connected to the moment so I could enjoy this final and minuscule victory—the ability to open this drawer without her permission. Yet the act of holding the key didn’t feel victorious; it felt like nothing, as if it were emptiness defined.

Her words (some of her many) echoed in my head, as if she were watching me (maybe she was): With every wish fulfilled there is something lost.

Yes.

The tumblers inside the polished wood scrambled. I slid my finger into the space between drawer and dresser and then pulled. There were only two items inside: a large leather book and an engraved fountain pen.