Burberry trench coat

The Burberry trench coat is more than a distinctive garment in Brett Bohlinger’s story: its repeated appearances turn a mistaken identification into a recognition, linking her hesitant relationship with Herbert Moyer to the eventual reunion with Garrett Taylor. At first, the coat seems to offer Brett a clue about the man she has glimpsed around Chicago. Later, worn by Garrett as he returns to her, it becomes part of the story’s imagery of missed encounters and chances not yet lost.

First Appearances and Misrecognition

During a hospital visit with Herbert and Austin Elizabeth, Herbert suddenly remembers his coat and leaves to retrieve it. He comes back carrying a khaki Burberry trench coat over his arm. Brett’s response is immediate: “That coat!” The garment catches her attention so completely that she stares at it “as if it were a magician’s cape.” Her reaction gives an ordinary item an air of revelation, though the revelation is not yet reliable.

Brett compares Herbert with the man she has encountered outside Andrew Benson’s building, on the train, and on a jogging path. Herbert is not that man, she recognizes, but she wonders whether he might nevertheless be “my Burberry man.” The coat makes the possibility vivid precisely because Brett has not yet established the wearer’s identity. It is at once a clue and a source of mistaken association: its recognizable appearance invites her to connect people whose relationship to the garment remains uncertain.

The hospital scene also places the coat beside Brett’s growing certainty about Austin. After staying with the baby until visiting hours end, Brett finds it easier to leave because she knows Austin is hers. Herbert’s coat returns with him into this intimate, hopeful moment, but it does not settle the question of which man belongs in Brett’s future. The contrast between her confidence as a new mother and her uncertainty about love gives the garment’s appearance a double charge.

The Coat at the Point of Separation

Later, as Herbert ends their relationship, the coat appears again in a sharply different scene. He takes his Burberry coat from the closet while Brett watches, tearful, and tells her he truly loved her and Austin. The garment that had once made Brett imagine a romantic possibility now accompanies an actual departure. Its presence makes the breakup physical: Herbert crosses the room, retrieves the coat, and leaves through the door.

Brett’s thoughts immediately return to the identity she had attached to the garment. She wonders whether she has let “my beautiful Burberry man” walk away, even as Herbert has just left. The phrase shows that the coat has become shorthand for a hoped-for person, not simply an article of clothing. Yet the scene preserves the difference between the symbol and the man: Brett’s longing does not establish that Herbert is the stranger she once saw, and the story has not yet disclosed who that stranger is.

Recognition Through a Repeated Image

The distinction begins to resolve when Brett sees a Burberry trench coat being hung on a metal rod. The sight makes her light-headed, and she asks herself whether this could be the Burberry man, while acknowledging the improbability. A man pays Marilyn, lifts his coat, and turns toward Austin. His warm greeting to the child precedes his recognition of Brett, reversing the order in which Brett has been searching for him: the coat catches her eye first, but the encounter becomes personal through his face and memory.

He recalls several specific occasions: spilling coffee on Brett’s coat outside her apartment building, seeing her while jogging, and encountering her at Chicago station after she missed her train. Brett remembers the station and admits that she had wanted to catch his train, not merely make her own. The Burberry garment has not, by itself, identified the man; rather, it has brought Brett into the scene where his account of their repeated encounters can confirm the connection. Garrett Taylor’s later declaration makes the identity explicit: he had a crush on the woman he saw on the train, at the apartment building, and on the jogging path.

The Coat in the Reunion

When Garrett comes to Brett in the storm, he is wearing his Burberry coat and carrying wildflowers. Brett calls his name from the doorway, sees him across the street beneath a black umbrella, and runs out into the rain. Garrett shelters her with the umbrella and draws her close. The coat is now part of a scene of deliberate return, not an accidental glimpse: he has come because he does not want another meeting between them to pass by.

Garrett explains that Brett and the woman he had noticed in earlier encounters have become one person to him. He says he could not bear to wake one day and find that his train had left while the woman of his dreams remained on the platform. Brett answers, “It was you I was hoping to catch,” turning the train image from a record of missed opportunities into a confession of mutual desire. Across these appearances, the coat moves from Herbert’s ambiguous entrance to Garrett’s unmistakable return. The narrative does not establish that every appearance involves the same physical garment; its significance lies in the repeated Burberry image, which gives Brett’s uncertain search a visible motif and helps prepare the final recognition.