Chapter 24: Sold

The next Saturday the sky over Oakhill Park was clear and cold.

We came early, before the vendors had unloaded their trucks.

Giles carried the folding table, and I carried a shoebox full of blank index cards.

Phyllis came behind us with a thermos.

Carol and my mother came last, arm in arm, arguing about whose turn it was to bring the coffee cake.

"It's mine," Carol said. "You brought it last week."

"I brought it to church."

"That counts."

My mother, to my great surprise, laughed.

The organizer was waiting at the free board with his feed-store cap pushed back.

"Dean cleared out of the townhouse Thursday," he told us, before I could ask. "He left the key under the mat and no address."

"His cousin in Indiana says he's sleeping on a couch."

"And Shelby?"

"She took a deal. She pays back every cent she touched, and she does six months of community work."

"Starting here, I'm told. Picking up trash."

He said it with a straight face, and I managed to keep mine.

I didn't feel glad.

I felt finished, which was better.

The board stood bare, a square of cork under the October sun.

At the very back, on the far corner of the clothesline, a scrap of paper still fluttered in the wind.

It was half a photograph, torn through the middle, with half my smile on it.

A faded price card hung beneath it by one tack.

One cent.

Giles stopped beside me.

"That's you," he said.

"That's half of me."

"Which half?"

I turned my head and studied it.

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