Nov 3: The surprise in the Closet

This month I am part of a group that is doing a flash fiction piece a day. We have prompts. The first was a red sweater. Flash fiction is usually a complete story under 750 words. One of the most famous which may or may not have been written by Hemingway. Baby shoes. For sale. Never worn."

Nov 3. A Surprise in the Closet

Diana had not been in the attic since they bought the house 12 years before. Alan was the one who took things up and brought them down. He said the pull-down stairs were too hard and too rickety for her.

He had been a good husband overall. A year after his death in a car accident the pain had dulled. She’d followed everyone’s advice and not made any big decisions. When she put their house on the market, it had sold the first day, a bit faster than she was ready for, but in the current market, she accepted it as fate telling her what to do.

It was a small house, a Cape Cod. They had modernized the kitchen and bathroom and finished the basement. People who entered for the first time, commented that it was “homey” or “cozy.”

They had no children.

Despite how well they got along, how much they enjoyed doing things together, like golf, museums, concerts, eating out, the sex was infrequent. Sometimes Diana, especially after Alan’s death, regretted that she was childless. When she was being totally honest with herself, she admitted that she never had felt terribly maternal. Unlike many couples, they never discussed looking into why a pregnancy never happened.

The attic smelled dusty. Of course it did. She could see the dust in the sunbeams filtering through the tiny window.

Diana looked at the accumulated boxes, paintings, an old chair and piles of dishes and a few pots and pans. Alan had built bookshelves that were filled with books that they had not donated to the library when the bookshelves downstairs had become overloaded.

Boxes were marked winter clothes and Christmas directions. Three boxes were filled with things that she’d brought from her parents’ house after they died, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw away.

One by one she moved the boxes to the top of the stairs, leaving a space against one wall. Looking more closely, she saw a closet door, which she opened. Inside was a trunk that she didn’t remember seeing before. It was old fashioned and covered with ship stickers.

She had to maneuver it to it through the door. Once it was in the middle of the attic, she lifted the lid.

Inside were clothes, women’s clothes. Beautiful clothes. Expensive clothes. There was silky underwear including three lacy and padded bras. High-heel pumps seemed to match the dresses. A couple were what would have been described as fucked-me shoes.

The woman who would have worn them would have had to be at least six-feet tall with big feet.

At first, she thought the trunk must have been left by the previous owner, but the styles were up to date. In fact, one dress was one that she’d had been featured in one of her women’s magazine’s two months ago.

Her mind ran through possibilities, but about the only one was almost impossible to accept. The clothes had belonged to Alan.

Instead of continuing, she climbed back down and made herself a cup of tea. Maybe she could hire someone to clean out the attic. As for the clothes…she wasn’t ready to deal with that.