The Other Sock

Nora came back the next Tuesday, and this time she brought luggage.
Three bags, to be exact, stuffed with Sam's clothes. She dragged them through the laundromat door like a woman smuggling a very soft body.
The teenager looked up from his phone. "Oh no. She's back, and she's brought friends."
"His name is Eli," said the name tag on his shirt, which she had not noticed last week. She decided she would use it, as a sign of respect.
"Eli," she said, "I need to wash these. And I need you to not say anything."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say the dryers are down to nine minutes per quarter now."
"That's a lie."
"It's the truth," he said. "They changed it."
She sat on the cracked orange chair, hugging her tote bag, and stared at the bags on the floor. Here was the truth she had not said out loud to anyone: she had not washed Sam's clothes in six weeks, because they still smelled like him. Cedar and coffee and that cheap aftershave he refused to give up.
Washing them felt like erasing him a second time.
Eli noticed. He was young, not blind.
"You know," he said carefully, "my grandma never washed my grandpa's cardigan. She kept it in a plastic bag so it would keep smelling like him. Then one day she just... took it out and wore it. Said it was too warm to be sad in a bag."
Nora blinked at him. "That's either very wise or very strange."
"Honestly? Both. She's from Ohio."
She laughed, a small crack of sound, and it loosened something. She took the first coat out of the bag, Sam's old blue jacket with the torn pocket and the permanent smell of sawdust, and held it against her face for one long, shaking breath.
Then she started going through the pockets, because that is what you do before you wash anything. Receipts. A guitar pick. A grocery list in his awful handwriting that read milk, eggs, courage.
And then, folded into a tiny square in the inside pocket, a note.
She unfolded it slowly.
Nor, if you're reading this, you finally did the laundry. About time. The other sock is in the green scarf. Don't ask why. Love you more than a clean dryer. —S
Nora read it three times. Then she started laughing so hard that she had to hold on to the machine. It was not graceful. It was the ugly, wonderful kind of laughter that has crying hiding inside it.
"Everything okay?" Eli asked, hovering.
"He hid a sock," she wheezed. "He hid a note about a sock in a coat so I would find it eventually."
"Is that... good?"
"It's the most Sam thing he has ever done."
She dug through the bag until she found the green scarf. And there, tucked inside the folds, gray and slightly crumpled and absolutely ridiculous, was the other sock.
She held the pair side by side. Matching, at last, after six weeks apart.
Then she did something she hadn't done since the funeral. She put every last piece of clothing in the machine, one by one, and pressed start.
The water ran. The drum turned. And Nora watched it all go round, not feeling like she was losing him, but like she was finally letting him travel with her instead of staying frozen in a closet.
"Hey, Eli?"
"Yeah?"
"What time do you close?"
He glanced at the clock. "Ten."
"Good," Nora said, settling back into the orange chair. "I think I have a few more stories."