“My mother would haunt me from the grave if I let this go to the church sale unsorted,” Clara said, her voice barely louder than the hum of my old refrigerator.

She set the heavy plastic laundry basket on my kitchen table.

It made a dull, heavy thud.

The basket was filled with tangled skeins of acrylic yarn, old plastic crochet hooks, and half-used binders of patterns.

It smelled like Rose’s house.

Lavender soap, old paper, and the faint, sweet scent of the peppermints she always kept in her apron pocket.

I just stood there.

My hands were flat against the cool laminate of the counter because my knees felt a bit weak.

Rose and I had walked every single morning for fifty-two years.

We started in nineteen seventy-two, when my son was still in diapers and her daughter was just learning to walk.

We wore housecoats over our clothes at dawn.

We walked down to the corner of Maple Street, past the old bakery, and back to my porch.

We did it through rain, through humid July mornings, and through winters that turned our cheeks red.

We saw four presidents I voted for and several I couldn’t stand.

We buried our husbands within eighteen months of each other.

We raised our children, watched our grandchildren grow up, and never once ran out of things to say.

Then came January.

It was a Tuesday.

The kind of bitter, grey morning where the wind off the lake bites straight through your coat.

The kind of morning Rose would usually call me about at six to say we should skip.

But she didn’t call.

She died at five in the morning, quietly, in her sleep.

I still walk.

I won’t pretend it is the same.

The left side of the sidewalk feels entirely empty, like a room with one wall missing.

My neighbors see me and give me those soft, pitying smiles.

“You are so strong, Helen,” they say.

It makes me want to scream, but I just nod and keep my head down.

Now, Clara was standing in my kitchen, her coat still damp from the morning sleet.

She reached into the basket and began pulling out the bright scraps of yarn.

There was a half-finished green baby blanket, a yellow scarf that had lost its shape, and several mismatched potholders.

At the very bottom, wrapped in a piece of tissue paper, was something heavy.

It was soft, dark grey wool.

I recognized the wool immediately.

We had bought it together at the wool shop in town three years ago, back when we still thought we had all the time in the world.

I pulled it out.

It was a cardigan.

It was clearly my size.

The back was finished, and one sleeve was half-done, still attached to the wooden needles Rose loved.

Pinned to the collar was a small, white paper tag.