We were cleaning out his basement when I found the external hard drive. Gray, scuffed, a faded sticker that read "BACKUP - DO NOT ERASE" in his blocky handwriting. I'd tossed it in a box of his things and forgotten about it until tonight, when I'd been rummaging for an old charging cable.
I stared at the screen. My uncle had been married once, briefly, in the late eighties. My mother called her "the one who got away" but never said more than that. The file kept going—fifteen minutes of them talking, laughing, the crackle of a record player in the background. Barry White. Of course.
Now the file was copying onto my desktop. 847 MB. Password protected, of course. -ALBUM- - BARRY WHITE - All Time Greatest Hits - Best Of.rar
The last file: 2024-02-03.flac
Him in his living room, the one I'd cleaned out. His voice was thin, frayed at the edges. "If you're listening to this, you're someone I loved. Or someone who loved me. Maybe both." A wet cough. "I wasn't good at saying things to faces. So I said them to this little recorder instead." The sound of a lighter, a long exhale. "Elena, if you're out there—I'm sorry I didn't fight harder. Tom, I miss you every day. Mom, I hope you're proud of me somewhere. And whoever found this hard drive... don't be sad. Put on some Barry White. Dance in your kitchen. That's how you remember me." We were cleaning out his basement when I
I clicked the first one: 1983-08-14.flac
The last thing I did was drag the original RAR into my music folder. Renamed it: -ALBUM- - BARRY WHITE - All Time Greatest Hits - Best Of.rar I stared at the screen
Inside: forty-seven audio files, all labeled with dates. Not song titles. Dates stretching from August 1983 to February 2024, the month before he died.