Chapter 23: The Stole

The car was full by seven in the morning on the last Saturday in August.

June's boxes filled the back seat and the trunk, and Sullivan's truck stood behind mine with a mattress roped into the bed.

He had been transferred to the firm's Nashville buildings on the first of the month.

He said it was a coincidence.

Nobody who had watched him carry boxes up my mother's stairs believed him.

I stood in the front hall of the Maple Avenue house for the last time as its owner.

The lawyers had finished the week before.

Calvin had signed the counteroffer without the silence clause, with his attorney reading over his shoulder like a man at a funeral.

His partners had bought him out at a figure that made my lawyer whistle.

I had sold the house to a young couple with a baby, and I'd told them where the good tomatoes grew.

June came downstairs with one last bag.

She wore jeans, a gray sweatshirt and a ponytail.

She looked eighteen years old and very tired.

"That's everything," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"I checked my closet three times."

"What about the stole?"

Her face changed.

She set the bag down and went back up the stairs two at a time.

I stood and listened to her open and close drawers.

When she came down, she had the white stole folded over her arm.

It still smelled faintly of the auditorium, of floor wax and the hot lights.

She held it out to me.