Chapter 16: A Button

On Tuesday night I let Carla into the garage again, and I told her it was for one hour.

She sat on an upturned crate next to the box I had carried out of the apartment, the one with my mother's cedar lid.

I had not opened it since I moved the table.

"What's in it?" she asked.

"Everything she left that wasn't furniture."

I lifted the lid, and the smell of lavender came up, and Carla pressed her lips together.

There were recipe cards held with a rubber band, a church bulletin, a pair of reading glasses and a roll of stamps.

Carla picked up the recipe cards first.

The top one read, in blue ink: Eggplant, the way Carla likes it. Less salt.

She went completely still.

"I came to dinner at your house every Friday until I was eight," she said. "I never knew she wrote it down."

"She wrote everything down."

"She wrote me down."

I took the grey cardigan off the chair and put it in her lap.

"Gia."

"I'm not giving it to you. I'm lending it. I can't tell yet which one of us it belongs to."

Her fingers closed on the sleeve.

Then she opened her purse and took out a small round button, grey and slightly chipped, and held it in her palm.

"It fell off in the hall the day you took the sweater back. I picked it up." She swallowed. "I've been carrying it around."

"You could have told me."

"You'd have thought I stole it."

"I did think that."

She almost laughed.

Dino brought a needle and a spool of grey thread from the shop drawer without being asked, and went back to his bench.

Carla sewed the button on in short, careful stitches while I sat across from her and watched.

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