“I kept changing the messages every season because I liked knowing you’d save them. It made me feel like you’d still have a piece of me even after I was gone. I guess I was right about that.”

The tape kept going a little longer with her saying she hoped the dogwoods would still be there for me to see. Then it ended with one short line.

“Play the others when you need to, honey. I’ll be honest, I always liked that you never could throw anything away.”

I turned the player off after that. The kitchen stayed quiet except for the clock ticking. I haven’t put another tape in since.

The chair creaked when I shifted, the same sound it made every time Helen sat down for coffee. “This thing is older than we are,” she would say, pushing on the arm with both hands. “One day it’s going to give out on us and then what?” I always told her we would get a new one but we never did. The wood felt worn smooth under my fingers where years of plates and elbows had rubbed it down. There was still that little mark near the corner from the time she spilled gravy and tried to scrub it clean with a rag. “It adds to the story of the place,” she said after giving up. “Like everything else around here.”

The cassette player sat warm from being on, the plastic holding a bit of heat along the edge. I put my hand close to it but did not press anything. The April tape rested beside it with the case cracked open at one corner. I could smell the faint trace of the coffee I had poured earlier, now gone cold in the cup on the counter.

The clock ticked on the wall, that steady jump of the second hand she had liked when she brought it home from the flea market. “It makes the house feel alive,” she told me. “Like there’s something happening even when we’re sitting still.”

I thought about the afternoon she must have found the shoebox. She had come upstairs later and asked if I needed anything from town. “I’m going to run some errands,” she said, standing in the doorway with her purse. I told her no and she left, but now I picture her pausing by the workbench first, maybe touching the lid before she walked away. She never brought it up. Not once in all those years.

“Raymond, you always were the one to hold on to things,” she said another time when I put an old pair of boots back in the closet instead of tossing them. “That’s why I married you, you know. You don’t let go easy.” I had laughed and closed the door on them. She just shook her head and went back to the kitchen.