Tony sat, too, but carefully, as if testing again the sturdiness of the chair, with its aluminum frame and webbing. It splayed a little but held firm. “I assumed you had your brother here for the bigger stuff,” he said.
“I did call him for anything really heavy,” Beth admitted, wishing she hadn’t started this, “but there wasn’t much.”
Mouth tight, he opened the flaps of the box. They both peered in.
“What is this?” he asked.
She couldn’t not talk to him, she supposed. “I didn’t really go through this one either on Sunday. It’s kind of miscellaneous. Maybe stuff Mom packed.”
After poking around a little, Tony lifted out a gold-trimmed porcelain tray, which really should have been wrapped, as delicate as it was.
The glimmer of memory she’d had when she first opened the box solidified. “Wait. That was on the dresser. Mom would drop her earrings and watch and what have you on it. Dad his change. You know.”
“Did your mother switch it out for something else?”
Slowly, Beth shook her head. “I don’t think so. I…didn’t notice when it disappeared.” She gazed at the back of a picture frame lying face down. “Dad must have not wanted to look at things that reminded him of her.”
“Strange reaction for a man who claims to have believed she’d be back.”
She skewered him with a look. Or tried to, anyway. “I doubt he packed up her stuff the day after she disappeared. It could have been months later.”
To his credit, Tony said, “You’re right.” But then he added, “Wouldn’t you have noticed?”
Beth reached for whatever was in a frame and wasn’t surprised to recognize it immediately, too. “Mom did this,” she whispered. It was crewelwork, a riot of pink and white and pale yellow roses against a cream backdrop. “It was a kit. The kind where the fabric was printed with the colors you were supposed to use. It still took forever, with the stitches so tiny.”
He studied it. “One of my sisters does things like that. She’s given me a couple.”
Beth blinked. “You have framed crewelwork like this in your house?”
“In my house, yes.” He grimaced. “Somewhere. On the walls, no.”
Yesterday, she would have laughed. Today, she only said, “I need to grab some of that newspaper to wrap these things. I’ll bet Emily would like to have them.” Before he could open his mouth, she added, “Later. I know.”
Another frame held her parents’ wedding photo. She stared at it for the longest time, seeing how happy they both looked, her mother beautiful, her father handsome. This had always been on the dresser, too, never with the other pictures in the family room.
She felt Tony’s gaze but couldn’t let herself look up to see his expression. If it was gentle, sympathetic, she might break down whether she believed his kindness insincere or not.
The box held several porcelain figurines, two chipped, a pair of embroidered pink satin pillows, and a pink china lamp base. Emily would probably love to have all of these.
For the first time, Beth wondered how her father felt about pink. Nothing in this box, except maybe the porcelain tray, seemed to belong in a man’s bedroom. Maybe he hadn’t dumped it all in this box because he was angry and hurt; maybe instead he’d thought, At last I can get rid of this pink crap. Would he tell her if she asked?
“Anything here that doesn’t look familiar?” Tony asked. “Or that you know wasn’t in your parents’ bedroom?”
She shook her head and nestled the lamp base in a bed of crumpled newspaper. Once Tony closed the flaps, she labeled the box with the black marker and let him slide it into the same place she’d taken it from.
He returned with another. This one was filled with albums of family photos as well as loose ones that hadn’t made it into an album.
“Did your parents take a lot of pictures?” Tony asked.
“More when we were little, I think. I don’t remember Mom getting the camera out so much once we were teenagers.” Amusement lifted the corners of her mouth. “We probably weren’t as photogenic. Or she was so annoyed at one or all of us, she didn’t feel like memorializing us.”