"These were, um…. These bowls were Mom's." Cassie pulled a set of blue mixing bowls from Sam's upper cabinet and set them on the counter. "Do you have boxes, or…."
"Uh, no, I hadn't gotten that far yet," Daniel told her.
"Okay, um…." Glancing around the kitchen, the young woman asked, "And you want me to get all my stuff out this weekend?"
"Oh. No," he pressed. "No, Cassie, there's no rush. It's gonna be awhile before it's all settled and we have to get everything out of here. I just… with the sentimental things, I wanted you to have first pick." Okay, that wasn't exactly true. "And… well… eventually I'll need you to tell me what you want and what you don't. We could get a good start on that this weekend, but it doesn't have to be done."
The look she gave him was blank. "A start? You said three things."
"That's… really for the rest of us. Everyone can have three things that remind them of Sam. I'm just trying to make sure no one takes the things that are really important to you. But the rest of it…. The rest of it is yours, Cassie, if you want it. You'll at least need to furnish an apartment in the next few years, so… furniture, or dishes, or… the house," he told her with a shrug as her eyes moved uncertainly around the space. "You could keep the house if you really wanted it, but I think that's a lot of work for a college student. And you don't know where you'll be in four years yet." The ties holding her to Colorado lessened seemingly by the day. "It's just that… whatever you don't want will be appraised and auctioned. So we don't have to move it out, but I at least need to know what it is – what to tell the appraisers to ignore."
The young woman's hands covered her face for a moment. "What would I do with it?" she asked, overwhelmed. "I don't…. It's not like there's room in my dorm! And I don't…." She swallowed hard. "I don't have anywhere else."
Daniel blew out a breath. "We'll take what you need now to my apartment. And I have a little space in the parking garage. If you want furniture and stuff, we'll rent you a storage unit." But Cassie obviously didn't know where to start, and he prompted gently, "Do you want her car?"
"Her car?" she asked in disbelief before her hands scrubbed her face a few times. "God, this feels like grave robbing."
"It isn't." The two of them had never had a particularly touchy feely relationship, but Daniel leaned over the island to put a hand on her upper arm. "Cassie, it isn't. The will…. This was Sam's final opportunity to make sure you were taken care of. You're starting out on your own soon. A place, maybe a family. She wanted to help you with that, even if she was already gone. Take what you need, Cassie."
A tear escaped and dripped down her cheek, but she admitted, "I drive a really crappy car."
"Yeah, you do," he answered with a laugh. "The Volvo's pretty nice."
"The new one. I didn't like the old one," she told him.
"I never understood what she saw in that car," he agreed.
Her eyes flickered around the room again, and any humor in them faded. "Can I stay at your place tonight? I don't want to be here alone."
"Mi casa, su casa."
"Don't get fancy," she chided dryly. "We're really gonna need boxes."
~/~
Jack was prepared. He had an open beer beside him, a bottle of whiskey next to that, and his laptop. He'd almost aborted his plan to bring the USB drive home when security had insisted on screening its contents before he left the Pentagon, but he knew he couldn't read it in his office. The SF had been a stranger; he wouldn't have understood the context regardless. And in the end, he must have used an algorithm rather than reading it; the entire check had taken less than thirty seconds.
Jack sucked in a deep breath, held it, and plugged in the drive.
Windows can perform the same action each time you connect this device, his computer told him. What do you want Windows to do?
He stared at the message for an eternity. He wanted Windows to tell him if he should read the damned letter or not, that was what he wanted.
Open device to view files, it offered. Or take no action.
Jack clicked cancel and yanked the drive out of the laptop.