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It's late, I've had a few
and I can't sleep. Tomorrow's the inquest

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into the death of my best mate, son, my godchild and all round

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great kid. I've got to be
there to give a character statement on Carl,

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a friend of mine since the first
day of school, and his wife,

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and whether there might have been foul
play involved in Noah's death, And

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honestly, I don't know. I
can't stop thinking about it, replaying the

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story as Carl told it to me. Mostly I can't stop thinking about the

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shoes. Everything I know I know
second hand from Carl. So I'll tell

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you what he told me, and
maybe you could let me know what you

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make of it, because I just
don't know. Carl was a guy I'd

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have trusted with my life. Last
year he bought a new house with his

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wife, Sue's. It was never
in a million years the kind of house

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i'd imagine Carl buying, an old, tumble down little thing with a thatched

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roof in the assent of nowhere Devon
a beautiful house, no mistaking, with

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wooden beams, buckets of character,
acres of garden to get lost in in

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a village where everyone knows everyone nice, just not very Carl. I can

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see what drew them though they needed
the space. Noah was fast approaching eight

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and his younger brother Archie was a
five year old wrecking ball. Add a

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heavily pregnant and a cat into the
mix, and London just wasn't an option

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anymore. I went to visit in
the first week after moving. Everywhere was

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still a mess of boxes, but
you could see how happy they were about

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the potential for the place. It
wasn't without its drawbacks. The floorboards were

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an even and groaned under the slightest
pressure. The layout was maze like,

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and sometimes it felt like there was
no knowing where a corridor was leading you

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before you'd somehow been turned back on
yourself. The thick walls made it a

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Wi Fi nightmare, and the house
didn't warm evenly. In fact, some

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areas with downright freezing. It was
the tail end of a balmy summer and

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I'd gone to get some more beers
from the garage when I noticed that first

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cold patch hits you in the bones. Called. I mentioned it to Carl

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and he laughed, yeah, we've
noticed them, never in the same place

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twice. Though you can be walking
the house at any time of day,

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all night, and it's like you've
walked into the bloody Baltic. SU's nodded

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in agreement, but she didn't laugh. The weirdest one was the other night.

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I was the last one up watching
match of the day, hadn't shifted

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from the arm chair in a few
hours, and it was like the cold

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spot walked into me with hindsight.
I don't know if any of that is

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relevant. It was just my first
recollection of that house. The first really

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strange thing happened about two days after
that. I was helping Carl returf the

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garden. All these boys raced around
playing a game involved from Pirates. We've

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been working for a few hours.
We both noticed the kid's game had stopped

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and they were both stood perfectly still, staring down at one of the flower

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beds. Karl shrugged and we both
went over to see what had paused their

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game. What struck me first was
how oddly still they had both become.

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They didn't seem to notice. The
first time. Carl asked whose shoes are

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those? Noah stirred the trowel in
his hand. The two of them had

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been digging in the flower bed,
and now in front of us was a

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hole that was nearly three feet wide
and one deep, and filled with shoes.

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Karl stooped down to pick one up. This isn't yours, is it,

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he asked Noah, brandishing an old
black leather shoe with an enormous buckle.

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Noah shook his head. Of course, it wasn't his shoe. It

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was perhaps the right size for an
eight year old's foot, but it was

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far too old to belong to any
of them. Karl lifted out another one,

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shaking the earth that filled it,
another shoe that belonged to a different

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time. I'm no expert, but
it wouldn't have surprised me to find that

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either of their shoes was more than
a hundred years old. Karl sent the

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kids inside, and together we excavated
the rest of the flower bed. We

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found twenty pairs of shoes that day, all of them made for children's feet,

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each a different style and shape,
some pow and beaten, some expensive

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and finest, and all of them
for children. Carl was clearly alarmed,

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and I could see his eyes start
to roam around the rest of the garden,

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wondering what else might be buried out
there. Whatever Carl said about the

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shoes. The sus was a conversation
behind closed doors. That night, we

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went out to the pub and spent
most of the evening reading what Google had

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to say about children's shoes buried in
the garden. The suggestions ranged from the

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sublime to the ridiculous, dodgy landfills, serial killer calling cards, play cleansing,

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Victorian wards that keeps spirits away,
fertility rituals. We took turns reading

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them out while we drank. Had
had been a good night and we'd laughed,

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but maybe he should have paid more
attention. After that, the shoes

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were kept inside. They made a
little display of them, tasseled together and

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old bits of rope around the fireplace, so who was thought they were quirky?

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In the months that followed, there
were other strange things that Karl would

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text me about. He said he'd
got up around four a m. One

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night kneading the toilet and smelt smoke. On the way back to the room.

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He did a once over other house
and had become convinced that the smell

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was coming from a free standing pot
plant in the kitchen. It was a

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little shrub that they'd had for longer
than then had noah. After a lot

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of sniffing, Karl said there was
no question it was coming from the plant,

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and when he pulled it out of
the pot, saw that the entire

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root system was ablaze, like the
soil was full of fluorescent worms. Neither

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of them had any idea what could
have happened, but were relieved they caught

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it in time, given how flammable
all the old timber and thatching was.

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A week or so later they found
the wasp nest. Sus was cleaning the

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lounge trying to sponge out a mark
on the wall when she heard the buzzing.

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The spot she was sponging gave way
completely, revealing a throbbing wasps nest.

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Carl sent me a voice message,
maddest thing, man, don't know

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if you've ever seen a wasp nest. They're a bit like beavers apparently,

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and that they'll carry back all sorts
of material to make it. But the

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nest was bright red and pulsing.
Sue's thoughts. She found like some kind

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of organs pulsating in the walls at
first, and wouldn't stop screaming that the

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house was alive. It's messed up
all good, though. Exterminators yesterday and

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they reckon they've got them all,
just need to keep an eye on it.

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Weird that nothing came up in the
surveys about this, though, not

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like the solicitors were cheap. Then
the cat went missing. First day that

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Noah went out to try his new
school. He came home calling for George

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and ran around the whole house,
but the cat was nowhere to be seen.

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Big fat old thing, not prone
to long adventures or leaving the house

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at all, really a London cat
that liked its creature comforts, just gone.

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They bought signs up around the village
and Noah requested that there was some

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kind of reward for the finder,
but it stayed gone. On Halloween,

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Carl and Suez took the kid's trigger
try eating around the village. They were

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starting to really settle into the village
life and getting involved in things that they

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had never done in London. They
come home swag bags bulging with little chocolates

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to find a cat sat on the
doorstep outside their house. Not George,

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Nothing like George. This cat was
sleek, lithe and mean looking, as

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Sue's put it. But Noah had
burst into tears and immediately started hugging and

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kissing New George, insisting that it
had to come inside and that the cat

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had chosen them. What are you
going to do? I laughed down the

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phone. I never had kids of
my own, and with the state of

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my love life, it's doubtful I
ever will. Oh, damn, man,

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I don't know. Obviously, that
is someone's cat, isn't it.

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We can't just have it. I
tried to explain this to Noah, and

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he said that the person can have
the cat back when they come for it.

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And that was a week ago.
Now I'm just worried. No nor

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come and we'll be stuck with this
new cat, who really is a bit

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of an asshole. We'd laughed,
and that was the last time I heard

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Karl laugh. Maybe we'll never hear
Karl laugh because the next strange thing that

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happened was that Noah died. Karl
said that he'd been sleeping when it happened,

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but Sue's woke him in a blind
panic, not knowing exactly what was

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wrong, but that something had happened. They went to Noah's room first and

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saw that it was sound asleep in
bed, and then went downstairs because they

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heard a bang. The door to
the garden was wide open, and the

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strange black cat was prowling around near
the flower beds. Carl said they never

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noticed this at the time, probably
not until a few days later, but

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all the shoes around the fireplace were
gone. All of no shoes were missing

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as well. Then they heard a
little giggle coming from upstairs and ran back

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up to find Little Archie sat on
the toilet with his trousers around his ankles.

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What are you doing, arch sus
had asked, apparently happy. Little

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Archie pointed down the hallway behind them
and said that he wanted to join the

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daisy line because it looked fun.
Neither Carl or Sue's understood what this meant.

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All the kids were arm in arm
like a daisy chain, and they

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went dancing down the corridor. They
went in and out of all the rooms,

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and I missed it because I was
in here and I was laughing,

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because they went into Noah's room and
out he came. He got to join

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the daisy line. Didn't look like
he was having fun, though. Carl

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told me that this was when his
heart really started to race. He said

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that a call patch had settled over
them over the whole corridor. Maybe it

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was because the leader was so mean. He had such a mean face.

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Even though the dance was fun,
he made sure that all the children kept

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dancing and dancing and dancing, and
if they stopped, he whacked their little

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toes with a sharp stick. Out
of all the questions that Carl had wanted

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to ask, what children, what
leader? What on earth are you talking

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about? All he actually said was
Noah, before renting off down the corridor

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back to his first child's room.
Maybe we can catch up with all of

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them in the garden, was the
last thing Sue's remembers Archie saying from the

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toilet. Carl tore into Noah's room, and the boy was still lying in

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bed, just as they'd seen him
the first time they checked. But this

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time Carl went right to his bedside. Sure enough, Noah had no pulse,

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his little chest no longer rising and
falling. A cold patch had settled

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into the room, and his cold
little body caught death or infant death is

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what people keep calling it. Noah
was really too old for that, but

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according to the doctors, sometimes these
things happen. According to the doctors,

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this can also be EXAs braided by
neglect, abuse or trauma from the care

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providers. So tomorrow is calls in
quest to see if either him or Sue's

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had a hand in this, and
I don't know. They both tell anyone

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who will listen these stories, these
strange happenings in the house and what Archie

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had said about the dancing children that
night, and everyone smiles and nods at

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these poor broken parents and wonders exactly
what I'm feeling right now? Was there

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something else going on and around this
whole mess I'm trying to help organize Noah's

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funeral. Sue said that if I
looked up in the attic, I'd find

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his little black suit that they bought
him for a wedding a while back,

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and a little box with some smart
black shoes. I found a suit,

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but the box was empty. And
the most messed up thing is I think

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I know exactly where those shoes are, and I can't bring myself to look