I could not account for the look that had passed between us—it was not the kind of casual glance you gave to a stranger, but something else entirely. Whatever it had been, I thought, I did not have time to consider it now; I waited until the entire party had filed into the little girl’s room, to look out, no doubt, at the unremarkable garden. Not a face I would forget, I thought, thinking of the silver-haired man. But I did, in fact, forget it, or any rate I did not remember it well the next time I saw it. But then I was at the end of the hallway, pushing open the door to what appeared to be the master bedroom. And for the first time since I’d arrived at the open house, I began to feel some hope that here a trace of my father still remained.

I closed the door quietly behind me. This room had a more lived-in quality, as if its occupants might still return, although it was difficult to imagine my father sleeping beneath the pastel print of a sailboat that hung above the bed. But there was a door off the far side of the room that turned out to be a closet still full of clothing. Coats, mostly, I was surprised to see.

Why, I wondered, so many coats in this climate? I ran a light hand across their sleeves. It occurred to me that in fact I had seen my father in a coat, once, but that had been many years ago, in practically another lifetime. The memory of the morning he’d come to visit me in Ottawa, where I had been living at the time, hovered just beyond my consciousness, threatening to intrude. But that was a complicated memory in many ways—and at this time, during this short window of opportunity in my father’s house, it could only be a distraction. I made a somewhat dramatic gesture of frustration, as a consequence of which I found myself at the back of the closet, my face buried in the wool sleeves of my father’s coats, my nose in contact with a stiff lapel, with only the vaguest sense of there being a noise behind me, a nagging, persistent noise, which eventually resolved itself into the voice of the real estate agent saying, “Sir? Sir?”

Here’s a tip you won’t need: It’s always better to eat a little something, even when you think you aren’t hungry. Especially when one lives alone, because it’s easy to think to oneself: Why go through all that trouble, and dirty up dishes? But I have learned from experience that it’s better to make an effort, even when the only beneficiary is yourself.