Chapter 4: Boxes on the Lawn

My things were on the front lawn when Rachel turned onto our street.

I saw the shape of my record shelf first, lying on its side in the grass.

Then the boxes, six or seven, with their flaps open to the sky.

My band-director jackets hung off the porch railing, one for each year I'd taught.

Rachel stopped the car at the curb and put it in park.

"Don't get out yet," she said.

I got out anyway.

The sprinklers were running.

They had been left on over my sheet music, and the pages lay in the wet grass, gone gray and soft.

My trumpet case stood in the mud at the bottom of the steps.

I knelt and opened it.

The trumpet was inside, dry and dented from the drive, and I shut it again and held it against my chest.

Five or six neighbors stood on their porches.

A man across the street had his phone out.

On our porch, in a hardware-store apron with her name stitched on the pocket, stood Diane Haskell.

She had a coffee mug in one hand.

She was wearing my grandmother's ring on her little finger.

It was too small for any other finger on her hand, so she had pushed it to the knuckle.

"Oh, there he is," Diane said, loud enough for the whole street. "The man who walked away from my daughter."

"Hi, Diane."

"You've got nerve. After what you put her through."

"I came for my things."

"Your things?" She tipped her head at the lawn. "Those are your things. We took them out for you. You're welcome."

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