"Giving Up the Ghost" by Mary Logue

So far: Wendy brushes off Lucinda.

Dirt gets into places you wouldn't imagine. I've been finding them all. Cleaning is its own reward. Especially when there's no one to mess up after you. I've washed and ironed all the curtains. The rugs have been beaten and hung out on the line to air.

Every book has come down from the shelf and been dusted. The first Harry Potter book. He loved it; I hated it. An old copy of "Catch 22." Newer copies of "Get Shorty," "Lonesome Dove," "Portnoy's Complaint." As I touch them I think of Richard reading them, what he said to me about them, how he touched their pages.

I am losing him one fingerprint at a time.

I heard Cloud shrieking. The noise seemed to be coming from the bedroom — Richard's and my bedroom. The door was open a crack, but not enough to allow Cloud to squeeze out.

When I pushed the door open, I found Cloud stretched out on the bed like a glamour queen. I hadn't slept in the room since Richard's death; I hadn't touched anything. The sheets were crumpled, the blanket kittywampus. His pillow was still scrunched into a little ball, just the way he liked it.

"I think you should move in with me," Richard said as we were sitting in his loft on his couch.

"You're here most of the time anyway."

"I'm really not sure."

"About what?"

"About everything."

"About us?"

"Why not?"

"Well, you're older than me. You know what you want to do. You're a big successful artist. I'm just a waitress slash seamstress. You own this loft. I don't have anything. I'd like to travel, do a few more things before I settle down. You know what you want. I'm not sure about anything."

Richard looked at me. "Who is he?"

At Bob and Judy's Grocery Emporium, I dug through the freezer trying to find a small turkey. Ten pounds was the smallest available. I'd have leftovers for weeks, but I wanted a turkey.

When I brought it up to the register, Elsie said, "So you're having folks over for the holiday?"

She stopped ringing up my groceries and looked over her glasses at me. "You're going to be alone?"

"This year, yes."

"That's not good."

"It'll be okay."

She looked in my basket. I had a bag of potatoes, a can of pumpkin and a bag of flour.

"Too much trouble."

She shook her head as she finished ringing up my meager supplies. "It's not Thanksgiving without wild rice."

"You could have bought a pheasant." Gary pointed out to me in a phone conversation that evening.

"Gary, in order for me to have a pheasant, I would have had to go out and shoot it. They don't sell pheasant in the grocery stores up here. I thought about a chicken, but it just wouldn't do. You need to eat turkey on Thanksgiving. It's the only time of year I have it."

"Are you really not having your dad over?"

"A woman friend's?"

"Yeah."

"How does that feel?"

"You mean that my dad has a girlfriend and I have no one?"

"Well, that wasn't exactly what I meant but let's start there."

"I suppose."

"How long am I going to be this way?" I asked Gary.

He didn't ask for a clarification. He seemed to know exactly what I was asking. "Hard to say. I have no experience. But judging by how you usually do things, you will not scrimp on the grieving, but you also won't overdo it."

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"What are friends for?"