Author's Note: Thank you to Sammy who stopped on her birthday to give these the quick once-over. :-)

Way 21

"Give away clothes that haven't been worn in two years."

It was an anniversary. But not of a marriage.

It was a day he would never forget until his last breath. But not for good reasons.

It was pain. It was heartache. It was devastation.

Two years ago, at this exact minute of this exact hour, she'd been pronounced dead.

Jeff's hand shook as he reached out, stopping only when his fingers reached the doorknob of a closet in his bedroom that hadn't been opened in two years.

He swallowed hard.

Scott's Little League team was doing a fundraising barbecue and yard sale this coming Saturday. All the kids had been asked to go home and ask their parents for things that could be sold at the yard sale.

When Scott had asked, Jeff's mind had immediately gone to one place: this closet.

Not three weeks earlier he'd caught Gordon in here trying to open the door, not understanding why it was kept closed, why he'd never seen inside it. Thinking maybe there were gifts inside, things purchased in advance of Christmas or birthdays that he might be able to sneak a peek at.

Jeff's first impulse on seeing the three-year old's little hand on the closet doorknob had been rage. And that's what got his attention. Rage? At a toddler? What would Lucy think?

What would she think?

That's when he knew that keeping her closet intact like a shrine was the worst possible poison. He'd no right having the urge to rage against their little boy simply because he was naturally curious. And so instead, with a heavy heart that matched each heavy step he took, he lifted Gordon into his arms and simply hugged him to his chest.

Then Scott asked for donations, and Jeff knew what he had to do. Except that thinking about what he had to do and actually doing it were two entirely different things.

He took a deep, shaky breath. He twisted the knob. As the door slowly swung open, her scent wafted over him, bringing her to life so suddenly in his mind that he had to stifle a small gasp. How she'd smiled at him. How she'd brushed her long, beautiful hair at night before bed, letting him run his fingers through it. How that always led to kissing and touching and making love.

She had been his soulmate. Without her, half of him had died a slow, agonizing death that even their children couldn't stop.

But at the very least, he could do something about this sacred closet full of her clothes, her coats, her spare purses, her shoes. Belts hung from a rack, boxes containing hats and memorabilia she had carefully stored away from the ravages of time lined the two shelves above the clothing.

"Daddy!" Jeff whirled around to find Gordon running across the room. The little boy barreled into his legs, arms wound tightly around them. "Daddy, Alan puked in the car! Grandma has to clean it up!"

Jeff sighed. "Again?" he asked, eying the open closet.

Something Gordon spotted right away. "You opened it! Are there presents, Daddy? What's in there?" The little copper-haired boy rushed into the small space that even John at five years of age would've been hard-pressed to fit into. He stopped. He looked around. "There's no presents in here!"

"No, Gordon, no presents." Jeff wondered how the hell he was going to be able to go through and bag up Lucy's clothing.

Gordon exited the closet, his face puckered in annoyance. "Well, it should be the present closet, not someplace to keep a bunch of clothes."

With that, his son ran out of the bedroom, feet pounding on the hardwood floor, and screeched his hello to Alan with a "Baby pukey!" yell that almost curled Jeff's hair.

Gordon was right. This shouldn't be a place to keep a bunch of clothes. At least, not this bunch of clothes. Lucy would much rather have had people wearing her things than having them somewhere where they'd only be gathering dust and maybe even moths.

Jeff turned and grabbed one of the big, black garbage bags he'd brought upstairs with him as the sounds of his mother, Gordon and Alan wafted up to him from the first floor. The other boys would still be in school for a few hours, and Ruth knew what her son was up to, so she'd keep the little ones busy for a bit.

Slowly, carefully, Jeff reached for the first item hanging in the closet: a brilliant teal blouse Lucille had loved to wear when they went out on a much-needed break from the kids.

His hands started shaking again as he slid it gently from the hanger, folded it, and placed it at the bottom of the garbage bag. He closed his eyes, pictured her beautiful face, and watched her smile at him. It was the right thing to do. Scott's Little League team needed the donations. Jeff Tracy needed the absolution.

It was time. It hurt like fucking hell, but it was time.

Way 22

"Throw out clothes that are in disrepair and that can't be mended."

Ruth sighed as she looked at the ever-growing pile of clothes on the floor of the little closet adjacent to the laundry room. Of course, this laundry room was larger than any she'd ever had before, with its four industrial-sized washers and four industrial-sized dryers. And the "closet" in question was roughly the size of hers and Grant's bedroom in that tiny house they'd lived in right after they got married.

But those things were beside the point.

The point being, there was a huge pile of clothes on the floor of the closet, and not a one of them any longer wearable. She stooped and picked up a pair of Scott's uniform pants, the legs ripped so much they'd nearly become shorts before he returned from that danger zone. The next thing on the pile was one of Alan's sashes, sliced clean in two on a rescue, and the uniform John had been wearing when he'd fallen off a girder, saved only by his shirt catching on the end of it until Gordon could reach him and haul him back up to safety.

There were so many near-misses, close calls and things that scared the bejeezus out of Ruth Tracy in that pile. And yet so many tales of her grandsons' heroic deeds, too. She supposed that's why she couldn't part with any of them, even though they weren't any use to anyone anymore, not even if she cut them up for rags. There wouldn't be enough left to make a quilt for a doll out of, let alone a useful rag.

So she sighed again, squared her shoulders and shoved the pants and two shirts she'd picked up into a large basket on wheels that she'd brought with her. The clothes pile had been started one year ago after the boys had returned from their very first rescue, with the tear in the rear of Virgil's pants. Oh, the ribbing he'd gotten on his walk through the Lounge!

But it was time to get rid of them. They were stinking up the entire laundry room, and others had noticed and asked what the smell was coming from. Ruth had only kept the devastated clothing out of sheer stubbornness, as if to tell the Fates that they might destroy her grandsons' garments, but it would not be getting their hands on her grandsons themselves if she had anything to say about it.

Which she didn't.

And the clothes really were nothing more than garbage.

She might have been sentimental, but she wasn't about to get the hairy eyeball from her son if he discovered the source of the smell, so one by one she tossed every single one of the offending items into her rolling basket. They were bound for the incinerator, each and every scrap of them. After all, Ruth reasoned, the way rescues went, she was sure she'd have a whole new pile in no time.

Until they started to smell, that was.