I zipped the bag back up, the sound sharp in the quiet attic, and laid it flat across my knees.
“We have three more trunks to go through before the cold weather sets in,” Clara said, standing up and brushing a speck of dust from her sleeve. “We cannot afford to keep things that have no purpose.”
I carried the garment bag down the narrow hallway and placed it in the back of my bedroom closet, tucking it behind my winter coats where Clara would not see it when she came to visit.
By four o’clock, the heat had settled into the Georgia clay, leaving a fine red powder on the tires of Clara’s sedan parked in the driveway. The sun had begun its slow drop behind the tall pines, but the air was still heavy with the scent of baked pine needles and dry earth.
I sat on the front porch with a green ceramic bowl between my knees, shelling black-eyed peas and letting the pods fall into a brown paper grocery bag. The ninety-five dollars I had spent at the grocery store that morning felt like a weight in my purse on the kitchen table, a reminder of how quickly the pension vanished.
A blue car drove slowly down the lane, kicking up a small cloud of red dust before it turned the corner toward the highway.
Then I saw the shadow at the end of our gravel driveway, moving past the rusted mailbox.
An elderly man walked toward the house, his steps slow and deliberate, his shoulders hunched inside a faded canvas jacket that looked too large for his frame. He did not look like the boys who had left Oakhaven for the jungle, but he walked with his chin tilted slightly upward, watching the porch.
He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and looked up, his hand rising to touch the silver watch on his left wrist.
