I opened another: 1994-01-22.flac
I went through them like a man possessed. 2001: him singing off-key in a car, his best friend Tom dying of cancer in the passenger seat, both of them laughing. 2009: a eulogy he never delivered at his mother's funeral, recorded alone in his truck afterward, voice breaking. 2016: the sound of rain on a roof, him reading a poem I didn't recognize, something about forgiveness. 2022: "I think I'm going to sell the Continental. I know. I know. But who am I keeping it for?"
I sat in my dark apartment until the sun came up. Then I unzipped the remaining files, transferred them to a USB drive, and wrote Elena's name on a piece of tape. My mother would know where to find her.
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
Now the file was copying onto my desktop. 847 MB. Password protected, of course.
I clicked the first one: 1983-08-14.flac
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.