Ed Wheeler would have said he was clearing out sixty-five years of memories, but before she died, his wife Cathy had no memories left to remove. The box he carried shifted to the left, nearly sending him and its contents to the floor, but he righted himself in time to see the scrap of paper on the threshold. Seeing Cathy’s handwriting was like hearing her voice—it had a seismic quality. He retrieved the tattered paper.

Forgive him, he is lost, written in Cathy’s elegant cursive.

Was she asking forgiveness for him? Was he the one who was lost? He felt as lost as a man could get. She was his compass and despite life’s chaos, she could always point him in the right direction. Ed was now adrift in a world of loneliness. His days, like pocket change, held little value.

He placed the box on the floor, put the paper in his pocket, and wandered about the house, stopping in the master bedroom. The dresser top was as she left it, though with an added layer of dust. Time was illusive, so he could not recall when she left him. Days became weeks, but did weeks become months?

He picked up her favorite perfume, spritzed the room, and closed his eyes. The room filled with her fragrance, summer jasmine. Cathy’s grey hair still contained a few strands of burning auburn, a testament to her stubborn Irish heritage. At eighty-five, she complained she was too old for freckles, but there they were, and he loved each of them. Her green eyes sparkled as bright on her last day as they had the first time he bumped into her. In his mind’s eye, she wore the floral print dress—the last one she purchased—and the string of pearls he bought her when their daughter was married. Cathy sashayed in front of the full-length mirror twirling and humming their song, “Stand By Me.” Often, if he found her alone, doing dishes or writing cards, she hummed. Now, he felt he betrayed her memory by burying her in the dress and, as if confirming this, the image of her vanished and the air went stale.

Ed wiped his eyes. They leaked a lot those days. He built an entire world for his wife, a world where he retold the same stories and answered the same questions time and time again. She studied photos of the past, searching for some familiarity in bygone vestiges. Finally, in desperation, she flipped the photos for the names Ed printed on the back. The names brought tears of recognition.

Sometimes she smiled, and sometimes she screamed foul, hateful things. In the final days she spent much of her time talking to the dead. Family members who had passed on. Ed heard vivid one-sided conversations with parents, siblings, even family pets, but with him, she was mostly silent. When she was troubled, he brushed her hair and hummed for her. It set her mind at ease. The doctor spoke of restricted blood flow and used words like irreversible. Even that was welcomed over the silence which shadowed him like a second skin.

The doorbell summoned him. Ed had only occasional visitors, and they asked if he needed anything. What he needed was Cathy, but, of course, he couldn’t say that out loud. He returned the perfume bottle to its dust-free footprint and forced himself to answer the door. The cleaning lady, a recent and unwanted household addition, could answer the door, but it was Ed’s home, and on principle he would do it.

“Took you a while,” said his daughter, Melody, when he finally answered.

“Yes, sweetheart, the door seems a little farther away these days.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He watched her move through the room like a swarm of gnats. Her voice, deeper than his wife’s, could rub him like sandpaper. “I came to help pack things up,” she said. “You know, psychologists say you need to move forward, and removing these things will help with the process.”

“You know what I think of psychologists.”

“I’m only trying to help. Besides, it smells like you bathed in mom’s perfume.”

Melody said too much, and he said too little, afraid if he poked the dam, it would burst. Since Ed slept in the guestroom, his daughter and the cleaning lady cleared old memories from the master bedroom. Everything but the furniture and the paint on the walls. His daughter and the cleaning lady spoke in muted whispers while they packed things. They moved like a tag-team wrestling duo, first one and then the other passed him with a box of this or a stack of that. Melody shorter and stouter, the other woman tall and slender, built more like his wife. The cleaning lady’s face possessed that ageless quality with which some women are blessed.

“Dad, here’s a stack of notepads with telephone numbers and names. Look through them and see if anything is important. Otherwise, it goes in the trash.” She laid the notepads on the kitchen table, straightened the tablecloth and darted around the room as if she had forgotten something. “Oh, a woman will drop by later to talk to you.” Then, she kissed him on the cheek before dashing away. That was Melody.

Ed stared at the notepads; his fingers stroked them like a cat. Cathy bought these notepads from a local vendor, all containing identical watercolor images of water lilies. They were as much Cathy as her piercing green eyes. This felt like salting fresh wounds. He glanced through the top notepad. The first several pages contained names and addresses of people to whom Cathy sent cards. She loved written communication, cards and letters of every type. She shared people’s celebrations and sorrows.

The last page was used for a grocery list—bread, eggs, apple-crisp—and the bottom of the page was torn away, leaving the lovely watercolor forever altered. Its jagged wound was partially healed by the same image below. He lifted the page and ran his finger across the rough tear. His wife kept many of these notepads around the house to jot down thoughts, and they all contained watercolor images which would eventually be marred by his block printing or embellished by her elegant cursive. The basement was filled with notepads carefully boxed and taped.

As Ed stared at the torn page, he reached into his pocket, retrieved the scrap of paper, and, trembling, tried to match it to the torn page. His vision blurred as the pieces finally lined up. The mended page glared back at him proclaiming: bread, eggs, apple crisp…forgive him, he is lost.

The thunder of his pulse pounding between his ears threatened to overtake him, but he reached for another notepad, its water-colored pages filled with lists of names and numbers. The name Greggory Green appeared several times. Often enough, he memorized the number by the middle of the notepad.

Did Greggory Green need forgiveness? Was he lost? Perhaps, there was more to Greggory Green than met the eye. Ed lost all focus from Mr. Green when he found a list of cards to send which ended with a torn page. His throat went dry. Was this another plea for the lost person on the scrap of paper?

Ed wiped sweat on his pant leg before reaching for the next notepad. Without dates, there was no way for him to determine the sequence of the entries. On the third page was a list of outstanding bills, a note to call Melody for lunch, and to call Gregg for an update. Was Greggory Green now Gregg? What was he updating her about? Was she updating him? His mind went from one conspiracy to the next as he scanned the remaining notepads for clues. Gregg and Greggory were frequent entries and, indeed, the numbers were the same. There were many torn pages, and the act appeared almost involuntary, far from Cathy’s meticulous nature. She was a person of surgical precision and would not ordinarily tear a page in such a way.

He needed to gather his thoughts, and a hot cup of tea usually helped. After adding water to the kettle, he brought the flame to life. It brought with it some warmth the notepads lacked. He had limited options, but the unknown gnawed at him.

Ed wondered if Melody knew about Greggory or Gregg Green? He had to know more. He found no more notepads on the main level, but the basement was a treasure trove of notepads stored in rows of boxes. Previously, he promised his wife he wouldn’t go down into the basement anymore after the nasty fall he took. While carrying something to the basement, he missed a step. The stop was sudden and painful, and recovery was slow. A skull fracture, cracked ribs, and a torn ligament. But was the promise binding to a woman now gone who kept secrets from him? While standing at the basement door, vertigo overcame him. Ed gripped the doorknob, closed his eyes, and waited until the feeling passed.

The kettle whistled for relief from the blazing heat beneath it, and he prepared his tea with lemon and honey, the way Cathy always made it for him. The cleaning lady could not make the tea correctly. She rushed the process, refusing to let it steep long enough, so Ed did it himself. While he pondered possibilities and chased rabbits, his tea went from torrid to tepid. Still, answers eluded him, and Greggory Green consumed him. He reached for his phone, but it wasn’t in his pocket. That didn’t keep him from checking his pocket repeatedly. He poured the rest of his tea down the sink wishing he could read the tea leaf fragments tinting the stainless-steel vessel.

Ed had only Melody to ask about Mr. Green. She could lie, but Melody was a poor liar. If he confronted his daughter in person, her eyes would drop low and to the left, and her trembling lip would tell him the truth. This would surely strain their relationship, and she was the only one he had left. This was a button Ed wasn’t ready to push.

His nostrils flared as he paced from the sofa to his coffee table and back again like a hamster in a glass cage, hoping to see something new with each passing lap. He scoured his memory and tried to recall any instance when Cathy seemed insincere or deceitful, but nothing came to mind. Cathy was secretive if she believed in the cause, and a mysterious man may be a justified cause. He went into the living room searching for his phone or his glasses.

When he noticed the wall consumed in shadows, Ed checked the time. How long had he questioned the virtues of his deceased wife? The hands on the tea kettle-shaped clock were motionless, at 11:17. The clock stopped working years ago, but Melody had given it to her mother for Mother’s Day when she was twelve, and Cathy would not let it go. Her sentimentality was endearing and aggravating, but not as aggravating as a mysterious man in her life.

The doorbell startled him. He opened the door to a young woman in blue scrubs. Her auburn hair and emerald eyes stunned him. She was Cathy for a moment. Then, she was a shorter, tattooed woman with pursed lips, probably in her forties. “Mr. Wheeler, I’m Doris Lakewood,” she said. “Did Melody tell you I’d be stopping by?”

Ed’s reply was a blank stare. He remembered Melody saying something about a woman coming today. He muttered, “Yes. Please come in.”

As Doris crossed the threshold, the cleaning lady popped in from the laundry room. The woman could move like a ninja and seemed to be everywhere at once. The two women smiled at one another and the cleaning lady offered tea for everyone. Doris accepted, but Ed declined. “How difficult could a good cup of tea be?” he muttered.

Ed sat in his recliner, placed the scrap of paper in Cathy’s stationary box on top of all the others and closed the lid. “What is it you need me to do?”

“Oh, I merely want to talk to you and get to know you. May I ask you some questions?”

“How long will this take?” Ed asked. His left leg quavered, an indication of his agitation.

“Not long. I’m going to ask you to write or draw something in a few minutes. Perhaps you should slide the glasses from the top of your head so you can see better.”

As Ed slipped his glasses into place, Doris asked who the first President of the United States was and other questions to which he mostly knew the answers. However, the way she constantly made notes on her laptop and nodded made him second guess himself. She often made notations before he spoke. Then, as the cleaning lady brought tea, Doris asked him to draw a clock. Round, square, or any shape he preferred, and she wanted the time to represent 4:10.

Ed was no artist. That was one of Cathy’s many gifts. The pencil was like a block of wood in his hand; he forced it to draw a clock, sensing the irony of drawing a clock while time inched its way forward. Ed looked at the drawing he created—a disproportioned teapot. The spout was too low and too short, and the handle misshapen. Its wavy hands pointed to 11:17. He shrugged in acceptance of his creation and handed the drawing to Doris. She studied the drawing for what felt like an eternity while her fingers danced across the keyboard.

The cleaning lady came in to remove the tea service. When she saw his clock, she gasped, but said nothing, only collected everything and disappeared into the kitchen. Evidently, the woman was an art critic as well as a cleaning lady.

Doris excused herself and left the room. At first, he thought she went into the powder room, but then he heard the two women talking in the kitchen. He clenched and unclenched his jaw as color rose in his cheeks. He didn’t care for the women talking without being in the room. He wanted to know what was going on. The women emerged from the kitchen laughing. His accusations evaporated before passing his lips.

“We were discussing different flavors of teas,” Doris said. “I enjoyed today’s tea so much and wanted to know what kind it was. I’ll be leaving now.”

“Excuse me, did you tell me who you were?”

“I’m Doris. Goodbye Ed.”

Ed stood by the front door as the strange woman got into a sports car a shade darker than her scrubs. As twilight descended, streetlights flickered to stave off the inevitable. He didn’t think to ask for a business card. The lady said his daughter mentioned her, and he allowed her into his home unchallenged. This was not the action of Ed Wheeler in his early days. That Ed was more cautious.

He didn’t sleep well, his mind replaying his interaction with the strange woman. He couldn’t recall why she’d come other than she was Melody’s friend and wanted to talk to him about his clock. His hand drifted across the mattress and, for a moment, he expected to find Cathy’s inviting warmth, but the cold reality bit him like frostbite and he shivered.

The sun had yet to rise, but Ed sat at the kitchen table clutching an empty teacup. His kettle rested silently on the stove, no flame to give it a voice. The microwave flashed 4:23. All day to miss his wife, now he had the night as well. The empty cup pressed against his lips.

Out of the darkness a voice asked, “Ed, are you ready for tea?”

For a moment it sounded like Cathy, but it was only the cleaning lady. Why was she here? Was she spying on him? She shouldn’t be here during the night. What good is a cleaning lady at night? She was dodging rent or charging him extra for the nighttime hours. Maybe both. Resentment toward her gripped him so tightly he could barely breathe. Ed pushed away from the table and walked past her without speaking.

Sleep betrayed him, so in his room he sat and waited for morning. The alarm clock posted 6:30am, a respectable time for breakfast. The last two hours proved productive for writing a letter declaring he no longer needed the services of the woman, and he dismissed her forthwith in his plain block printing. Ed addressed it “To Whom It May Concern.” Immediately after breakfast, he would send her packing.

Dressed in the shirt Cathy gave him on their last Christmas together and his best slacks, Ed was setting himself free from the woman who invaded his home. His fingers drummed the table nervously. She startled him as she emerged from Melody’s old room. The woman must have returned to bed after offering tea. While he was dressed, she wore only a housecoat and house shoes. Breakfast tasted better than usual; his appetite bolstered knowing he would soon be free of her. After wiping his mouth from the last bite of bacon, he handed her the letter, which she read in silence. Ed thought he would savor this moment, but she looked crushed, and he couldn’t say why.

 A single tear escaped her puffy eyes. It landed on Ed’s signature causing the first letter to blossom. She carefully folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope. “Is this what you want, Ed?”

“I feel your services are unnecessary and believe you and your company are trying to take advantage of me.”

“Ed, I’m sorry you feel that way. I’ll call Melody immediately. She can make other arrangements. Perhaps someone else can better meet your needs.” She abruptly turned and disappeared into the kitchen, her finger tracing his skeletal shoulder as she passed.

For a moment, he was confused. He felt the woman forced herself into his life, trying to talk to him and keep him engaged. Suggesting different meals for him and walks in the park, ideas Melody must have planted there. In the blink of an eye, his thoughts turned yet again. The thought of finally being free of the cleaning lady gave him a better outlook for the day, at least until Melody arrived. He opened the door, and she almost knocked him over as she blew past on the way to the kitchen. Ed followed her, unsure what set her off. At the table, her purse landed with a thud.

Melody held out her hand to the cleaning lady without saying a word. He was sure the letter would turn to ash as soon as her eyes blazed across it. With it in her hand, she turned and glared at him.

“Melody,” said the cleaning lady, getting her attention, “obviously, your father wants me to leave. At this stage it’s probably for the best. I can’t take care of him.” She looked at Ed and started to speak, but he turned to pull his chair away from the table. The moment was gone, and she remained silent as he sat staring at her.

 Ed tried to make sense of what was happening. He should be happy. He was about to be free of the woman, but Melody was rigid—hadn’t even said hello. She merely stormed into the kitchen and demanded to see his letter. This was his house, and he was certainly within his rights to dismiss hired help who didn’t meet his standards.

“He’s not well,” Melody said. “He can’t decide what’s best. He didn’t pass any of Doris’s cognitive tests. She said instead of drawing a clock showing 4:10, he drew a teapot and put hands pointing to around 11:15. Dr. Green said the timing of the transfer was our call.”

“Melody, look at the wall over his chair.”

She left and returned, still obstinate. “Okay, he drew the stupid teapot clock that stopped working years ago. What does it prove?”

“The clock stopped at 11:17. So I’d say 11:15 was very close.”

“Well, I’ve had enough. I’m calling Gregg to tell him it’s time. This letter is the last straw.”

The cleaning lady bent forward, cupped Ed’s face in her hands, lifted his chin, and stared into his bewildered gaze. Tears cascaded down her face. “Melody, forgive him, he is lost.”

“But mother—”