Susan Sauer sat quietly in the living room of her childhood home looking at "stuff".
Her father had recently passed away and as the only child of Wilbur and Natalie Booth, she was designated executor of their estate. Her mother had passed a few years earlier and her father was left alone to fend for himself in the tiny little house she grew up in. It was smaller than she remembered as a child, and it had been a few years since she was back home, and everything seemed old and foreign to her now.
Her father's health was failing over the last several months, but he told no one -- during the conversations he did have with his daughter, he never let on that he was in pain -- dying of a slow growing cancer that only his doctor knew about and was sworn to secrecy over. Susan made a habit of calling her dad once a week on Sunday evenings to check in on him and in those conversations, he always tried to be cheerful and upbeat. She noticed too late that he was becoming withdrawn and quieter with each week and when she got the call from his next-door neighbor that her father has passed, she cried out in shock and dropped the phone.
Susan's husband Bill tried to console his wife but the guilt she felt over not being more in tune with her father racked her -- she fell into a depression and lashed out at Bill for moving her to another state for his job years earlier -- away from her mother and father and her hometown outside Detroit. It was a silly argument and Susan knew her husband had to go where the work was at the time and she supported his decision, but she needed SOMEONE to blame for not being there for her father.
The house was musty and smelled old -- Her father had done the best he could, but you could see the signs of disrepair as his health deteriorated -- leaky faucets, untrimmed hedges, grass long in need of cutting and weeding. Susan didn't know where to begin or how to separate what few valuables remained from the junk.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice Bill coming into the living room until he spoke up.
"Hey, babe -- how's it going?"
She glared at her husband and then softened when she saw the look of concern on his face. Bill was geeky tall, 6'2 -- rail thin, with a pasty complexion and thinning hair. They had been married for 18 years and while she loved him dearly, he certainly wasn't the wild man she fell in love with almost 20 years ago. He had a slight middle-aged pouch and a "Dad Bod", but he was a good man -- a decent provider and a solid husband and father to the kids.
For her part, Susan prided herself in keeping a trim figure -- she was barely 5'3 with curly brown hair and smallish breasts which she wished were bigger. But she still got a lot of attention when they were out because of her slender legs and a tight little ass she worked hard to keep firm and round. Like a lot of women, she knew what worked well for her and despite her conservative nature, loved to wear short skirts that hugged that tiny butt and showed off her legs. She was a big fan of 4-inch heels that accentuated those God given gifts.
Susan sighed and reached out to Bill for a hug. He wrapped his arms around his tiny wife and held her close...her breasts pressed against his stomach, and he kissed the top of her head, not sure what he should say or do...They held their embrace for about a minute until Susan pulled away.
"Bill, I'm really lost here -- I'm thinking we should just go through everything in the house and separate the wheat from the chaff -- we can put the good stuff in the trailer, and anything left over, we can hire one of those companies that clean up houses to haul away the rest. I don't see a lot of value here, but maybe you do?"
Bill looked down at her and nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me...I found a few things upstairs that you might be interested in and there were some tools in the basement that I want. I'll bring everything here in the living room and we can sort through it."
Susan smiled -- at least they had a plan. They both had analytical minds -- She was a bookkeeper for a bank, and he was a computer tech guy. She never really understood what he did but between the two of them, they made a good enough salary to own a home in the suburbs of Philadelphia and raised two great kids.
Bill disappeared upstairs and she heard him coming down the stairs. Suddenly, a trumpet blast pierced the silence, making her jump.
"Bill!" she cried out as he emerged from the hallway with a grin on his face, holding a brass trumpet in one hand and a box in the other.
"I found these upstairs in your parent's bedroom," he said. "Isn't this your father's trumpet from his old days in that blues band?"