Chapter 21: Your Things

I carried Brett's things onto the front lawn at seven on Sunday morning.

It took nine trips.

His blazers went first, on their hangers, hooked over the porch rail.

Then his running shoes, his gym bag, the framed photo of his college lacrosse team, and a box of cufflinks.

The magnet from the Denver airport gift shop went on top of the pile.

I put it there carefully.

On Cedar Street, the neighbors' curtains moved one by one.

A man walking a beagle slowed down, saw the pile, and kept walking more slowly.

I sat on the porch steps with my coffee and watched the pile in the October sun.

At nine, a car pulled up to the curb.

Brett got out of the back seat in yesterday's clothes.

He had a bruise on his cheekbone where Lila's hand had landed, and his eyes were swollen.

He stopped at the edge of the lawn and looked at his shoes in the grass.

"Babe," he said.

"Your key is on the mat."

"I'm not here for the key."

"Then take your things and go."

He walked up the path anyway, and sank to his knees in front of the steps.

He was crying, as he always did, and I waited for it to move me.

It didn't.

"I lost my job," he said. "I lost my friends, and my dad won't answer his phone."

He held out his hands.

"I have nothing, Valeria. You're the only one who ever really loved me."