“Mace, honey, why don’t you go see if you can rustle us up some coffee?”

With Alice now staring blankly at the TV screen, Mama jerked her head twice toward the kitchen. I got the message.

I might have been resentful that she sent me on an errand while she got down to the business of comforting Alice. But the truth is I’m awful at emotion. Mama and Marty are the ones with the gift. Maddie usually manages to give offense when she thinks she’s offering comfort. And I just clam up, as tongue-tied as a fifth-grade boy trying to talk to his first crush.

Alice could definitely use some coffee, and I was happy to have something useful to do. Her coffeemaker was on the counter, and the paper filters in the cupboard overhead. As I hunted around the kitchen for cups and spoons, I heard Mama murmuring in the next room, urging Alice out of the chair.

“Honey, you’ll feel so much better once we get you into a shower.”

Soon, the coffee was brewing. Steps sounded from the living room. One set was light; the other heavy. I knew Mama was helping her into the bedroom, because I’d hear the two of them stumble slightly every so often. I probably should have assisted, but my face burned at the memory of that gaping robe. Seeing Alice emotionally naked was somehow even worse.

Her bathroom must have been right behind the kitchen. I was relieved when I heard the water running through the wall.

While I waited, I straightened up, trying to make myself useful. I washed a few dishes; tossed away a paper plate half-filled with brown, crusted-over franks and beans. Opening blinds and turning on lights, I headed back to the dining room where I’d seen the bottle of booze.

Alice was devout, and we’d always believed she didn’t approve of drinking. If she’d slipped, the fact that someone had butchered her husband was a pretty good excuse. I figured I’d put the bourbon away anyway, take away temptation. If she wasn’t accustomed to liquor, drinking the remaining half might kill her.

As I stepped up to the counter, my boot hit something solid. Three cardboard boxes were shoved underneath, lined up against the wall. I glanced toward the closed bedroom door.

Darryl Dietz’s voice replayed in my head, accusing me of being a nosy bitch. While I resented the second part of that description, I had to admit he had a point with the first. I opened the flaps on the closest box.

A brown-checkered sport coat lay atop a jumble of men’s clothing. I remembered Ronnie wearing that jacket last summer to a prayer breakfast at the VFW. The next box contained big, heavy men’s shoes.

I peeked over my shoulder. The door was still closed.

I opened the last box, crammed full of framed photos. Right on top was a picture of Ronnie and Alice, young and smiling. Their hands were clasped together on a gleaming silver knife, poised to carve the first slice from their wedding cake.

I laid the picture on the carpet. Quietly, I extracted another: Ronnie, fishing in Taylor Creek. The next one showed him at the counter of the Home on the Range Feed Store and Clothing Emporium, before his injury. He’d worked there until a pallet of feed bags toppled onto him. Beneath that picture was a cap-and-gowned Ronnie, shaking hands at a podium and holding a high school diploma.

Except for that one wedding photo with Alice, all the shots were of Ronnie. Cross-legged on the floor with framed pictures all around, I was pondering how one box can sum a man’s life. But what of the moments a camera didn’t capture? A box of those memories might reveal a different life.

“Finding what you need, Mace?”

Mama’s sharp voice made me jump. I tried to keep the guilty look off my face.

“What are you doing messing around in there?” Alice looked less drunk now than angry.

“I … Uhmmm.” There really was no excuse. “I just wondered what was in the boxes.” Alice stalked to the counter, and bent to close the flaps on the first two cartons. She held out her hands. “I’ll take those.”

“Sorry.” I gathered up the pictures and handed them over.

Mama shot me a dirty look. Alice slammed framed photos back in the box. I hoped the glass wouldn’t shatter with the force, just because she was mad that I was a nosy bitch.

_____

“My, that coffee smells good!”

Mama’s cheery words dropped like stones into the strained silence. We’d left the scene of my crime to sit at Alice’s kitchen table. I traced a border of morning glories on a blue plastic placemat. Alice stared at the refrigerator. Following her gaze, I saw she’d forgotten to pluck one last picture of Ronnie from underneath a magnet on the door.

“I’m …”

“Thank …”

Alice and I started to speak at the same time. Our eyes met, and both of us looked away.

“Honey, we’re guests in your home. Why don’t you go first?” Mama patted Alice’s hands, which were folded in the prayer position on her placemat.

“I was going to say thank you, Mace, for making the coffee.”

“And I was going to say I’m sorry for looking through your personal things. I don’t know what got into me.”

“I didn’t raise her that way,” Mama sniffed.

Alice sipped from the cup I poured, gave a little shrug.

The television still droned in the next room. But in the kitchen, it was so quiet I could hear a clock shaped like a blue teapot ticking on the wall. Air whooshed from a ceiling AC vent, rustling blue-checked curtains above the sink. Mama’s spoon clinked against her cup as she stirred her coffee. Finally, Alice gave a long sigh.

“I suppose y’all are wondering why Ronnie’s things are packed up.”

Mama’s eyes met mine over our coffee cups. “Well, now that you mention it, honey.”

Alice raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I know it’s strange, but then everything has seemed strange since Ronnie died. This morning, when I came home from your place, Rosalee, I saw him everywhere I looked in here. The more I saw, the more I remembered how he died.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I got those boxes from the shed, and started throwing in anything of his I could find. The more I drank, the better an idea it seemed.”

“What idea was that?” I asked.

“That if I could only get rid of all those reminders, maybe Ronnie wasn’t really dead. Maybe his murder was just a dream.”

She lifted her face to us, eyes brimming with tears. “It didn’t work, you know?” Her voice was as small as a child’s. “I filled three boxes and Ronnie’s still dead.”

Alice’s tears splattered onto her placemat, watering the morning glory border. I felt like a heel. Not only had I invaded the poor woman’s privacy with those boxes of clothes and pictures, I’d brought on another round of crying.

“I thought maybe you were mad at Ronnie. I remember after I caught my old boyfriend Jeb with another girl, I packed up all the souvenirs I’d saved of him riding rodeo and tossed them in the trash.”

“That’s hardly the same thing, Mace.” Mama sneered at me. “You’re comparing a lying boyfriend to a murdered husband. Did you misplace your manners somewhere in that crazy drive over here?”

I hadn’t told Mama yet about Darryl, or his stepson’s claim that C’ndee jilted him for a caterer in Himmarshee. I was trying to find a roundabout way to discover if Ronnie had been cheating on Alice. Even I knew asking a new widow such a bald question was out of bounds.