We were standing in the small kitchen of my new apartment on the fourth floor, where the traffic from the interstate below sounded like a distant river.

“These are heavy,” Linda said, lifting a stack of ceramic dinner plates from the bottom of the cardboard box.

“They belonged to my grandmother,” I said.

I took the plates from her hands and placed them on the lower shelf of the freshly wiped cupboard.

The white porcelain had blue flowers along the rim, slightly chipped at the edges from the move from Columbus.

Linda wiped her dusty hands on her jeans and looked around the small kitchen.