she was never coming back here to claim any of this. It had all been hers and she had worn it, and used it, and needed every bit of it—but it wasn’t her. Say it—say that she’s dead. I can’t. You’re the problem. Nothing he had done in his mourning process had brought her back. Not the agony of reminiscing, not the mindless drinking, not the worthless weak tears or the resistance to another female… not the avoidance of this place, or the hours sitting alone with an empty hole in his chest. She was gone. And that meant that all of this was just stuff in an empty house.
