Instead, it rots in place.
Everything remains.
The memories.
The jokes.
The smell of his aftershave on an old scarf.
Only now each memory carries a question.
Was that real?
Was that?
What about that?
The brown envelope was exactly where my mother said it would be.
Inside the largest flour canister, sealed in two plastic bags.
Vega opened it at the hospital with my mother’s permission.
There were eleven documents inside.
The first was an original stock certificate.
Asterion Secure Systems.
Thirty-eight thousand shares.
Issued to Thomas Mercer in 1999.
The second was a handwritten letter from one of the company founders explaining that the shares had been given in exchange for unpaid engineering work during Asterion’s first two years.
The third was an updated capitalization notice.
The fourth was where things changed.
It had been sent five months earlier.
Asterion Secure Systems had been purchased by a major defense technology corporation.
