“It already looks like someone lives here,” she said.

“It is getting there,” I said.

She handed me a stack of small bowls, wrapped in old newspapers from three weeks ago, before she went back out to the hallway to grab the last small box of books.

The cardboard boxes were stacked three high against the wall, labeled in my own neat, black lettering.

They contained only the things I had bought myself over the last twelve years, nothing from the house on Elm Street, and nothing that had been stored in my parents’ garage.

“Is this the last of the kitchen stuff?” Linda asked, carrying in a smaller box that rattled slightly as she set it on the laminate counter.