Sunday afternoon I opened the utility room and stood in the doorway for a while.
He had come on Friday, when I was at work, and taken what he could fit in his car. Clothes, shoes, the good watch, the small suitcase. He had left the rest. He had left the furniture and the boxes and the guest list and the invitations and the ribbon and the pen set and everything else we had bought together over the last year.
I had told him whatever was still here on Sunday was going in the trash. It was Sunday.
I did not throw it away.
I pulled the boxes into the hallway instead, one by one, and sat down on the floor beside them and went through everything.
The invitation proofs. My handwriting in the margins. His notes at the bottom, small and careful.
The vendor contracts. The floral estimate. The d
