A Life Beyond Us novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Moving Day

I told the Courier no.

I said it kindly, with Hugh's coffee going cold beside me.

"We're not a story," I told the thin, nervous voice. "If you want to write about the woman at the Lodge, go ahead. She'd love it."

On Thursday a moving truck backed up the driveway at nine in the morning.

Bridget stood on the porch with a clipboard and a travel mug, shouting directions at the driver.

"Boxes marked 'books' go to the garage," she called. "Boxes marked 'kitchen' go to the kitchen. Boxes marked 'misc' go in the river."

"Those are my surgical instruments," Hugh said from the lawn.

"Then they go in the garage."

He had sold the last of his furniture in Montana and shipped the rest.

There were nine boxes, a battered leather bag that smelled of horse, and a floor lamp with a bent neck that Tom picked up, studied, and carried inside.

"This is the ugliest lamp I've ever seen," he said.

"It was my grandmother's."

"I'm going to fix the neck."

"You are not."

"I'm going to fix the neck," Tom said, "and then it's going to be the best lamp in the house."

Bridget caught my eye over the clipboard and mouthed, I can't.

I laughed and went to carry a box.

By noon the hall was stacked to the ceiling with cardboard.

Hugh's boots stood by the door beside Tom's, and my sister had eaten half a pizza standing up.

I was in the kitchen when Tom came in and stood beside me at the sink.

He had sawdust on his forearms.

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