Free New England White by Stephen L. Carter

used tweezers to pull shards of glass out of his shoulder. Your boyfriend, said the doctor, is a very angry man. One reason Julia recalled that episode so sharply was that she was the one who had hit him with the bottle. “Very brave,” Ellie confirmed, with a warm glow.
    Old Tim was unimpressed. “You know what the difference is between brave and stupid? Brave is when you fight because you have to. Stupid is when you fight because you want to. That was Kellen’s problem right there. He loved to fight.”
    Seth was beside her. “Can I borrow you for a minute, honey?” She glanced automatically at the kitchen, where from her vantage point on the sofa she could see Vanessa scrubbing pots under the watchful eyes of the matrons. The teen seemed perfectly content, soothed by the repetitive motion. “She’ll be fine,” said Seth, following her gaze. “This won’t take long.”
    Now dressed casually in clean khakis and a stained shirt, Seth led her up a narrow stair to the room above the one-car garage. She knew at once that the room was Kellen’s, not so much from the squeaky-clean nattiness of posters and bed and books, or from the economics and math and science texts lining the walls. No, the way she knew was from the delicate silver hand mirror lying atop the dresser.
    “That’s mine,” she blurted, although she had not clapped eyes on it since the final split from Kellen. She rushed across the room and swept it up. “That’s my mirror!”
    “Been up here for years,” said Seth, watching her.
    “For years?”
    “I figured it was a lady’s mirror, not a man’s. But Kellen liked to have it around.”
    “He did?” said Julia, face suddenly warm. She picked it up. It was silver and tortoiseshell, intricately filigreed on the handle and the back, manufactured in the late nineteenth century by the famous British maker William Comyns, whose hallmark was embossed on the handle, hidden within the design. Granny Vee had given it to her just months before her death. Julia had cherished it, but left it behind in Kellen’s apartment when Tessa, against Julia’s will, had dragged her physically out of Manhattan to save her from further mistreatment. For a while she had been scared to ask for it back, worried that to speak to Kellen at all would be to tumble back into his bed; and then, when she met Lemaster and grew stronger, she was too embarrassed. The mirror had little value in the antiques market—two or three hundred dollars at most—and until now Julia had assumed that at some point Kellen had tossed it, or sold it, or given it to another woman. “I never knew what happened to it,” she said truthfully.
    “He wanted you to have it. He told me lots of times. I didn’t know it was yours to begin with.”
    “I don’t know what to say.”
    The dam of Julia’s will had held back the tears through the flight and the drive and the service and even the burial, but now they found the fissures and began to flow. Seth Zant, wise enough to say nothing, handed her his handkerchief. She dabbed her eyes. The small window gave on the twilit driveway, where people were packing leftovers into their cars. Laughter, hugs, departures. She blew her nose. She used the mirror to fluff out her hair. She turned it over, rubbed the surface with her fingernail, checking the finish. Kellen had not taken care of the silver, allowing it to tarnish. She glanced at the hallmark. Scratched in several spots, hardly recognizable. In her mind she reduced the value from two or three hundred dollars to between twenty-five and fifty.
    Wait.
    “Seth?”
    “Hmmm?”
    “Did Kellen leave…anything else for me?” Knowing it would sound greedy, but needing to know. Mary Mallard had put the idea in her head. Capturing the surplus. Whatever that was.
    “Anything like what?”
    “Wow, Moms,” said Vanessa from behind her. “Look at you. You were so gorgeous in those days!”
    Julia turned. Her daughter stood smiling in the doorway, studying