Her jacket sits in the very back of her closet, hiding behind a box of lingerie she only wore for her husband. It still smells of smoke and ash, burned in places from the embers, and when she presses her face into the right spot, she catches it; the faintest hint of Old Spice, where he had picked her up. In the sleeve, and that little strip of fabric that had been trapped against her ribs by his torso, is where she finds it strongest, even though it's slowly fading away.
And, it is the only physical memory she has of that day.
All of her other memories are locked away; shut down in that vault of painful memories, she'd rather not open. She only lets herself delve in on days like today; when reminders flash on television screens, and when she had caught a glimpse of articles about it, while checking her email. She hadn't told the rest of the team, and she was careful not to mention it around Chance, because what if her memory is wrong? What if it wasn't him? What if it had been somebody else but her close relationship with Chance had contorted the memory, twisted it into something it wasn't?
She couldn't handle the disappointment.
...
Coda to the September chapter of Metamorphosis.