Lives On

Wright Thompson: CLAUDIA WILLIAMS FOUND comfort wearing her dad's favorite red flannel shirt. It smelled like him. Time frayed the threads, pulled apart seams, and years ago the shirt went into a safe. She keeps many things locked away. In a closet next to her garage, her father's Orvis 8.3-foot, 7-weight graphite fly rod leans on a wall. His flies are safe too, and she can see his hands in the bend of the knots. She feels closest to him fishing but has been only once or twice since he died. Nearby, pocketknives rust at their hinges. His old leather suitcase is there too, in its final resting place after years of trains, ballparks and hotel rooms.

Her husband, Eric Abel, comes home from running errands. He'd been through the safes and the storage unit they keep filled to its 10-foot ceiling, hunting for the flannel shirt. She is laughing in the kitchen, a lazy Sunday morning. Eric takes a breath and enters the room. "First of all, Claudia," he says slowly, "let me apologize; I don't know what we've done with that shirt."

Suddenly quiet and hiding now, she says, "I don't wanna think about it," as one more piece of her father slips away.