At first, they didn't know what to do with her clothes.

  They were still wearable. Some might never have been worn. perhaps.

  Most of the clothes were too big or the wrong style for any of her daughters or daughters-in-law to consider keeping.

  There was, in fact, a large closetful of stuff that no one wanted to sort out. Some would have been especially hard to decide about because she wore them every day.

  But one of the daughters-in-law volunteered before too long, in the family discussion of all that mattered, to put the clothes into paper bags. They told her to take whatever she wanted.

  Some Saturday after the Big Loss, the clothes were packed into bags. There was one jacket, particularly, that couldn't be kept even though it would have fit, because its sight brought physical pain to the beholder.

  And the bags were brought to the thrift store and left as a gift to the poor. They weren't gotten rid of, as some things are.

  And a woman, after a time, began unloading the bags, and this is where things began to happen.

  The woman's name was Joan, and she was a grandmother whose three grandchildren lived with her. They lived in a basement apartment of a house that had been remodeled in the 60s into three apartments. The people upstairs smoked and regularly had the cops over at midnight for a friendly shouting match. If Joan had smoked, at least it wouldn't have been quite so bad, but she didn't.

  Joan was tired.

  Most of the things that came in that day were dirty or broken.

  These clothes, though, were folded and smelled of Snow King, and they weren't discarded for any obvious reasons.

  Somebody must have died, Joan thought. Wonder if they'd fit me?

  She pulled out a jacket and slipped it on--something she didn't do often.

  But the jacket didn't quite fit. The arms were too short and the back didn't reach all the way to each of Joan's shoulders. However, there was a candy bar in the pocket--Heath Bar, her favorite.

  Joan took the candy bar out and laid it aside, then hung the jacket up for someone to put it out for resale.

  As Joan turned from the jacket, she remembered her aunt who had given her candy treats as a child. One of her last memories of Aunt Dee was of Christmas twenty years ago.

  "You remembered!" Joan had cried, unwrapping a small, cheap music box. Ever since she could make sense of the world, Joan had always wanted a music box. But at her house, they ate bread and gravy every day, and macaroni and cheese for a treat on Sundays--well, maybe not quite that bad, but still... They got clothes twice a year, in August before school and at Christmas for presents.

  Joan shook her head. She felt a great longing to give her aunt a sign. She'd say something like: "Thank you for making life a little better... Thank you for the little things. Thank you for making me feel loved." Joan sniffed. She wondered, then, how she could make life less miserable for the people she cared for.

  But Joan's reverie was interrupted by a clerk coming to the back for her break.

  "Can you believe it?!" Mary said. She was a fat, white-haired woman with a greedy soul. "They just work your feet off you here! We're supposed to--BY LAW--have a break every two hours--and I go and ask Germaine if I can break, yet--No-o, she says, so, later, Can I take a break, yet--and, No, we need you--And now it's practically lunch time and she's only giving me twenty minutes. You don't even have time around here to go out, and I didn't bring anything. Man, am I hungry!"

  Joan was tempted to hide the Heath Bar. It looked untouched and relatively new, but she had learned to be generous.

  "Here," she said, "I found this. You can have it if you want."

  "Have what?" Mary gave Joan a look, "But I don't eat people."

  "The candy bar--in my hand!" Joan felt her face turning red.

  They each wondered at the sanity of the other.

  "OK," Joan said, "If you don't want it, I guess I'll take it." She unwrapped the candy bar, and slowly enjoyed the combination of chocolate and toffee--in two pieces. It was her break--in fact, her lunch.

  Mary watched the proceedings with growing trepidation. But then, after reaching her anxiety threshold, she reflected that eating imaginary candy bars wasn't a threat as far as crazy went, so she began talking again--taking up the whole of her twenty minutes, even as Joan finished the candy bar and re-commenced working.

  "Oh, what a lovely jacket," Mary said. She slipped it off its hanger and tried it on. "And in such good condition."

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  There was a cracked mirror that they used in the back for such occasions.

  "Oh! Oh! It fits so nicely except for the sleeves--and I look so thin!"

  "What's wrong with the sleeves?" Joan looked up from what she was doing.

  "Too short. But what's this in the pocket?" Mary pulled out a small book.

  "Why, I had one of these as a child..." Mary looked the book over. It was missing the front and back covers and was tattered and dirty at the edges, but it was a little copy of a fairy book that she hadn't seen in ages. It looked exactly like the book her mother had given her (God rest her soul), The Ugly Duckling. Shortly after that surprise gift, her mother had died of a sickness.

  The memory washed over Mary. Something she had put away with everything associated with her mother. A walk in the park had preceded a short talk. "Mommy's going away for a very long time. But grandma will look after you. Mommy's giving you this little present to remember me by. The little duckie is just like you--see--it thinks it's ugly." Her mother had flipped through the pages. "But see here. It's really a beautiful swan. And someday you will be, too. Just remember that."

  But Mary had forgotten until now. She had lost her book in her move to grandma's.

  "What did you have as a child?" Joan asked.

  "This little book." Mary held it out to Joan, and part of the miracle was that Joan could see it, too.

  "It's sure been used a lot," Joan said.

  "It's not really sale-able," Mary said.

  "That's true." Joan smiled at Mary. "Do you think you want it?"

  Mary sighed. "Yeah." She reached for her purse and dropped the worn book inside.

  Mary rehung the jacket and loaded it and several other articles into a shopping cart that she pushed into another room. There, Gerald stapled various tags to the items while Mary chatted on and on. Gerald said, "Mmhm," and "Ah!" until he came to the jacket. "Looks like something the wife'd like," he said. "What size is it, now?" He checked the label. "Um, too big." He was about to staple a tag to the sleeve when he felt a bump from the pocket as it brushed against his leg.

  "Something in the pocket," Gerald muttered.

  Mary wasn't paying any attention, since she was talking about Germaine while she looked over some large-ticket seasonal items that were stored here until the right months came around again.

  Gerald pulled out a wooden egg, which he opened in a special way that he knew to to do, because it was a magic egg.

  "Will you look at this!" he cried. He pulled out a magic scarf, the kind that produces more and more scarves from itself somehow. "I haven't seen one of these in years, ever since Uncle Albert--"

  Mary had wandered back into the front, so Gerald was alone as he exclaimed over his find.

  "Uncle Albert," Gerald said to himself, rather loudly, because he was slightly deaf and he had to speak this way in order to hear himself think.

  He missed Uncle Albert almost every day, even though he'd been gone... what was it now? Hmmm, over thirty-five years.

  Uncle Albert had been the life of the family, but then, Billy might be like him someday. Every time he saw Billy, he also saw Albert. The last time I seen him alive, he performed that magic show for my birthday--my twentieth. Uncle Albert!

  Gerald smiled wistfully. He showed me the secret to the egg and the scarf. Only me. No one else would ever have known, but maybe I'll show Billy.

  Gerald put the egg and scarf aside, and pushed the filled shopping cart out to Irene to put away the items.

  Irene was a young, sassy thing who plagued the life out of Gerald.

  "What you doin' with wehmen's close, you old man--" she said, "You tryin' these things on in the back. I just bet!"

  "I--well--I," Gerald said, "Could you say that again, Irene? I didn't get you."

  "You dirty old man," Irene said louder. "I know you. You makin' a name for our store, you are! I c'n see behine that mild exterior of your's. You tryin' on wehmen's close, you are!"

  Gerald smiled. "This batch is mighty fine," he said. "There's a jacket in there you might like."

  Irene took over the shopping cart and blew a kiss at Gerald as he turned to go back to his den.

  Irene put the clothes out and hung up the jacket without trying it on. It didn't interest her. Something bulged in the pocket but she didn't notice.

  Sandy, a community college professor, was two aisles over and working her way to the jacket aisle. She had a meeting to attend in which she was the chief spokesperson. She wanted to treat herself to a new look, if she could find the right thing.

  When she came to the jacket aisle, she saw one jacket right away that caught her fancy. Another woman was at the other end of the aisle, making her way through rather quickly.

  Sandy casually left her shopping cart out in the larger aisle, and reached out for the jacket just as the other woman came to a stop at the same place.

  "Nice jacket," the other woman said.

  "Yes, it is," Sandy said. "It just might go with some other things I've got."

  The other woman gave a slight nod and allowed Sandy to victoriously haul away the jacket to the dressing room.

  Sandy took off her overcoat and struggled into the jacket. She slipped her hand into the pocket.

  The jacket felt uncomfortable somehow. Not wide enough across the shoulders. But she decided to buy it anyway. It looked so nice.

  Sandy sighed.

  She felt something in her hand. It was somewhat like a postcard.

  She pulled it out.

  It was a kind of postcard, orange, with a place for two addresses. On the other side, was some hand writing, which Sandy read. It was just one sentence.

  The card said: "You need to act as though your (one) life does make a difference."

  Sandy turned the card over and over

  At first she wondered who had last owned the jacket and how they could have left such a personal kind of message in the pocket.

  But the saying seemed to bounce around inside her head.

  A slow burn of anger rose up from her heart, out to her hand. She ripped the card in two and took the jacket off.

  She had suddenly seen her dead sister's face--bruised beyond recognition--beaten to death by an unknown assailant almost ten years ago.

  Sandy stood frozen.

  The face in her mirror dissolved into a masked man. If it was only me--if there was no God--I would find you, and I would name you, and your death would be painful, she said to the man.

  Sandy took a deep breath. And then another. Each life makes a difference, she thought.

  She knelt before the two pieces of the orange postcard, picked them up, and stuck them in her wallet.

  If if was only me, she thought, I would not be strong enough to do anything but hate you... How fearful life would be.

  Sandy bought the jacket and walked home in the clear daylight with a heart that hurt like the toothache.

  It wasn't until a year later that Joan, Mary, and Gerald compared their stories of what they found in the jacket pocket. By then it was too late to find the jacket and exploit it--and for many months, they mourned the loss of things that were and things that could have been.