It's the little things, really. (Isn't it always?)
She still buys his shaving cream. Shaving cream meant for men with rough faces, meant to smell masculine.
Like him.
It is, quite obviously, not intended for her, for any woman. But she used it for him, and now, out of some blind habit or some desire to hold on to anything she can, she buys it.
And it kills her each time she uses it, kills her to be surrounded so strongly by his scent.
But it also lightens her. Because it is something, some connection to him when she feels so untethered from it all, free-floating – free falling, really – in this purgatory, this in-between, this searching.
That's really all she does these days. She looks. She's pretty sure she goes to work, even solves cases. She's even pretty sure she carries on conversations (she must, to solve these cases, right?). She knows she's eating because she hasn't fainted, although she's pretty sure she's shed weight she couldn't really afford to lose in the first place. He'd scold her for that.
But the only thing that registers with her is her search for him. Everything else blurs, runs together. The waiting, the hunting, the digging; it's all she sees.
She doesn't sleep much. Her dreams are always filled of him – the good, the bad, the painfulness that is her reality. It doesn't matter what version her subconscious presents; she still wakes aching for him, her chest tight, her sheets damp with sweat and tears.
But she does it again and again, day in and day out. Wake up, shower, work (read: searching for him with a side of trying to help the boys track down leads), go home, and then? This is mostly blank for her. It doesn't matter what she does to fill her time, wouldn't matter if she went to dinner with her father or jumped out of an airplane. It's all the same.
People look at her. They whisper. Perhaps, after all this time, they're whispers have become snickers, harsh words of she needs to get it together, she needs to accept reality, she's really lost it this time. She hears them sometimes, although it's truly hard for her to tell if she's imagined it.
The boys assure her that this is not happening, that everyone is in her corner, in his corner.
They say everyone is searching tirelessly for him.
She stopped believing them recently. If that were true, they'd have found him by now.
They've given up.
And it might appear as though she has, too.
Except for the little things. If anyone truly looked at her, and all of the little things left behind, they'd see that she hasn't let go, couldn't even if she tried. Doesn't want to.
So she holds tight to the shaving cream, to his scent, and goes on to the next day to do it all again.