Chapter 7: Taped Boxes

My mother wanted every detail, and she got four of them over breakfast.

"Was it a good kiss?"

"Ma."

"I'm sixty-six, not dead."

"It was a good kiss."

"Was he gentle?"

"I'm leaving."

"He's gentle," my mother told the toast. "That's a man who learned it somewhere."

I took my coffee out to the barn and heard her laughing through the screen door.

Abram called at noon.

"Dessa's at a birthday sleepover," he said. "She's gone until tomorrow."

"That's a first."

"She took a sleeping bag, a flashlight and a list of rules for the other girls."

"Do you need something?"

He was quiet.

"I need to do a thing," he said. "I think I need somebody to sit in the room."

"What thing?"

"I'd rather show you."

I drove over at six.

The house was cleaner than I'd ever seen it.

The pump man had finally come, and the kitchen faucet ran hard and clear.

Abram stood in the dining room with his hands hanging at his sides.

The cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall, eleven of them, all sealed with brown tape.

On top of the nearest box lay a pair of kitchen scissors.

"You've been moving these around since May," I said.

"Since March last year. I moved them out of the apartment, and then I moved them here."

"They were never opened."

"She packed some herself," he said. "In the last month. She labeled them."

He pointed.

Each box had a word in black marker, in a quick, slanted hand.

DESSA.

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