That night, I sat in my too-quiet home, staring at the casseroles on the counter. I opened the photo on my phone, then slowly typed the numbers into my GPS app. The map blinked, then loaded. A red pin dropped at a location 23 minutes away. I zoomed in and stared at the screen. It was a storage facility. A red pin dropped at a location 23 minutes away. I shook my head.
This couldn’t be happening. Thomas didn’t keep secrets! He was the type of person who kept receipts in labeled folders and had a system for his sock drawer. He told me when he bought new underwear, for Pete’s sake! That was one of the things I had loved about him — you always knew where you stood with Thomas. I stared down at the red pin on the map. Except, apparently, you didn’t.
This couldn’t be happening. I didn’t sleep that night. Instead, I searched for the key to that storage unit. I opened his dresser and rifled through his clothes. The smell of him was still caught in the fabric, but there was no key. Then I went through his coat pockets. I found receipts, a gum wrapper, and a pen from the bank. I opened his briefcase next and gasped.
A key lay right on top of his laptop! I searched for the key to that storage unit. I lifted it out, and my heart sank. It was just the key to Thomas’s desk in the garage. At 1:15, I climbed into the attic in my nightgown and bare feet, pulling the cord for the light. I hadn’t been up there in years. “Margaret, you’ll break your neck up there,” he used to warn me.
Then he’d head up and do whatever needed doing. I stood in the middle of all those boxes we’d accumulated together over four decades.
There weren’t nearly as many boxes as I thought there would be. It was just the key to Thomas’s desk in the garage. I opened Christmas bins, old tax boxes, and everything else in between. I found nothing. There was just one place left to look. Around 2 a.m., I went into the garage. He’d always insisted it was his space. “Don’t reorganize it,” he would say. “I know where everything is.” His tools hung on a pegboard exactly where he had left them. His workbench was clean. His desk sat against the far wall. There was just one place left to look
