While family traveled from the distant airports of Los Angeles and New York, the bereft chief and her sons went through closets and dresser drawers, carrying out the painful task of dividing and disposing of Seth’s clothing and other personal effects. Hammer could not look at her late husband’s bed, where the nightmare had begun as he got drunk and fantasized about what he could do to really hurt her this time. Well, you did it, Seth. You figured it out, Hammer thought. She folded extra-extra-large shirts, shorts, underwear, socks, and placed them in paper bags for the Salvation Army.

They made no decision about Seth’s valuables, such as his four different Rolex watches, the wedding band that had not fit him in more than ten years, the collection of gold railroad watches that had belonged to his grandfather, his Jaguar, not to mention his stocks and his cash. Hammer cared nothing about any of it and frankly expected him to zing her one last time in his will. She had never been materialistic and wasn’t about to begin now.

“I don’t know the details about any of his affairs,” she said to her sons, who cared nothing about them, either.

“That figures,” said Jude as he removed another suit from a hanger and began folding it. “You would think he might have discussed his will with you, Mom.”

“Part of it is my fault.” She closed a drawer, wondering how she could have endured this activity alone. “I never asked.”

“You shouldn’t have to ask,” Jude resentfully said. “Part of the whole point of living with someone is you share important things with each other, you know? Like in your case, so you could maybe plan for your future in the event something happened to him? Which was a good possibility with his rotten health.”

“I’ve planned for my own future.” Hammer looked around the room, knowing that every molecule within it would have to go. “I don’t do so badly on my own.”

Randy was younger and angrier. As far as he was concerned, his father had been selfish and neurotic because he was spoiled and made no effort to think about others beyond what function they might have served in his wasteful, rapacious existence. Randy, especially, seethed over the way his mother had been treated. She deserved someone who admired and loved her for all her goodness and courage. He went over and wrapped his arms around her as she folded a Key West shirt she remembered Seth buying on one of their few vacations.

“Don’t.” She gently pushed her son away, tears filling her eyes.

“Why don’t you come stay with us in L.A. for a while?” he gently said, holding on to her anyway.

She shook her head, returning to the business at hand, determined to get every reminder of Seth out of this house as fast as she could, that she might get on with life.

“The best thing for me is to work,” she said. “And there are problems I need to resolve.”