The heat advisory said stay inside. I went to the storage unit instead, because I couldn't sit in my apartment with his prescription bottle still on the counter. His name on the orange plastic, not mine.
In the back of his old truck, under the bench seat, I found a cassette tape with no label. White plastic, no writing, cracked down the middle of one side.
I plugged in the player he kept in the glove compartment. The one I'd made fun of him for still owning.
Side A, track one. It was him. Singing. Some song I didn't recognize, his voice thin and unsteady and trying so hard to hold the melody.
I never knew he sang. Not in the kitchen, not in the car, not ever. Thirty-one years and he kept this whole soft thing folded up where I couldn't see it.
The tape ran out after maybe forty seconds. Just static after that. I sat in the unit with the door half open and the heat rolling in and played those forty seconds again.
I'll never hear him sing for the first time again. That's the part I keep coming back to.