Hand-Me-Down Love by Jennifer Ransom Page B

him in so much pain. “Can you get
anything that you or your mother might want? Can you take that stuff
out of here? Like family pieces?”
    Marla reassured him
that she would take care of that. She would take care of everything.
    “ I need to get it
on the market right away. I’ll never be able to stay here again.”
    “ Okay,” Marla
said. “As soon as we empty the house out, we’ll put it on the
market.” She hesitated a moment before asking, “What about her
car?”
    “ I need to sell
that too, I guess,” he said. “What do you think?”
    “ Yes. I know
someone who can take care of that. I can get him over here tomorrow,
if that’s what you want.”
    He nodded. “Let’s
go,” he said. “I need to get out of here.”
    Marla drove Sean
back to her apartment. He seemed numb and uncommunicative. She led
him to the bedroom and took his clothes off down to his underwear.
    “ I’ll be back in
a minute with some tea,” she said, pulling the covers over him.
    Sean had propped
himself up on pillows when she came back into the room with a cup of
tea with lemon and honey. He took the cup from her and gave her a
grateful look. She sensed he wanted to be alone and left the room.
“I’m right in there if you need me,” she said.
    She sat down at the
kitchen table and put her head on her arms. Wracking sobs took over
her body, but she was careful to keep the noise low so Sean wouldn’t
hear her. She wept for her dead sister, she wept for her parents and
the loss of their child, she wept for Sean, and she wept for herself.
If she could have brought Meredith back and lost Sean in the process,
she would have given him up. She stayed at the table for a long
while.
    The gray sky turned
to black. Marla walked through the dark apartment and stood beside
the bed, removing her clothes before crawling under the covers. Lucy
had settled beside Sean’s leg and didn’t move. Marla closed her
eyes, hoping sleep would come soon.
    “ I know you love
her as much as I do,” Sean said into the black room. He touched her
arm in the dark.
    “ Yes,” she said.
“I love her. I miss her so much I can’t stand it.”
    “ I love you, too,
Marla,” he said. “I know it doesn’t seem right or fair, but I
do. I love you.”
    He turned on his
side and put his arm around her. She pulled herself over to his chest
and settled there as he stroked her arm. “I love you too,” she
said. Both of them were worn out with the emotions of the day and
they slept in each other’s arms all night.
    Early the next
morning, Marla woke up leaving Sean in the bed. As soon as she had a
cup of coffee she went down to the shop and called Jada.
    “ I’ve got a lot
of things to take care of with Sean’s house this week. It’s kind
of sudden, I know, but can you take care of things for me for a few
days?”
    Marla drove to a
Wal-Mart in Mobile and stocked up on boxes and large plastic
containers and went to Sean’s house. Sean’s house. Not Sean and
Meredith’s house. Nobody’s house anymore, really, Marla thought.
It was a dead house.
    The master bedroom
closet was full of Meredith’s clothes. The last time Marla had gone
through the closet it was to get Merrie’s blue dress. With eyes
full of tears, she took down each dress, each blouse, each skirt and
carefully folded them and placed them in the plastic containers. She
ran her fingers over the embroidery on a peasant blouse Meredith had
bought in Mexico and worn every summer since. The hardest of all was
seeing Meredith’s wedding dress, protected in a zippered plastic
bag.
    Marla tried to work
like an automaton removing the clothes and shoes. There was so much
to be done. She thought about calling her mother for help but then
thought better of it. She didn’t want to put her mother through it.
    Sean kept his
clothes in a spare bedroom closet and Marla tackled it next. She put
them in a plastic container marked “Sean’s Clothes.” He might
want them, or he might not, but she would