She shoved hangers here and there, deliberating, envisioning, intuiting and finally settling on a navy blue suit with trousers that had pockets and cuffs. She selected low-heel lace-up black leather shoes and matching belt, and a blue and white striped cotton shirt with French cuffs. She dug through her jewelry box for simple gold post earrings and her stainless steel Breitling watch.

She picked out a pair of gold and lapis cufflinks that had belonged to Seth. She fumbled with them as she put them on and remembered those times when Seth followed her around the house like Popeye, unable to manage buttons, lapels, matching socks or combinations, on those rare occasions when Seth dressed up.

It would have made sense to divide her late husband’s jewelry, leather briefcases, wallets and other things male between their sons, but Hammer held on. When she wore something of Seth’s, she had the eerie feeling that he wanted her to be the man he never was. He wanted her to be strong. Maybe he wanted to help her because now he could. Seth had always had a good heart. But he had spent his life at war with his compulsions and privileged past, spreading misery like the flu. He had left Hammer wealthy, relieved, pained, pissed off and as burdened with anxieties as he had been with his weight.

“Popeye, come here,” Hammer called out.

Popeye was lazy in a bar of sunlight on the kitchen floor. She had no intention of changing venues.

“Let’s get in our crate, Popeye.”

Popeye regarded her owner through slitted eyes. She yawned and thought it silly that her owner always used the we word, as if Popeye wasn’t smart enough to see through it. Popeye knew her owner had no intention of climbing inside that little plastic crate with Popeye any more than her owner was going to eat a heartworm pill or get a shot at the vet when the we word was used about those, either.

“Popeye.” Her owner’s tone firmed up. “I’m in a hurry. Come on. In the crate. Here’s your squirrel.”

She tossed Popeye’s favorite stuffed squirrel inside the crate. Popeye couldn’t care less.

“All right. Here’s your fuzzle.”

She tossed in the filthy lambs’ wool chick that Popeye had chewed the eyes off and routinely flung into the toilet. Popeye was indifferent. Her owner walked with purpose across the kitchen and picked up Popeye. Popeye went into her Salvador Dalí limply-drape-over-everything-and-play-possum manifestation. Her owner tucked Popeye into the crate and fastened shut the wire grate door.

“We need to behave better than this,” her owner said, feeding Popeye several little pieces of lung treats. “I’ll be back real soon.”

Hammer set the burglar alarm and went out to her unmarked midnight-blue Crown Victoria. She drove down East Grace, passing the back of St. John’s Church and turning on 25th where Tobacco Row was now upscale apartments and Pohlig Bros still manufactured “paper boxes of every design.” A graffiti artist had spray-painted “Meat is Murder” and “Eat corn” and “Anita Hill started it” on an abandoned tobacco warehouse, and rusting fire escapes and dead vines held on to old brick shells. One could get a bargain on used tires at Cowboy Tire, and Strickland Foundry and Machine Company had refused to quit.