“They’re folded on the bench in the hall,” I said.

“The white ones go on the warm cycle, Margaret.

Cold water leaves a greasy gray along the edges.”

She cinched the lunch bag strings tight, gave two to Caleb, and steered Chloe toward the garage door.

“Caleb, don’t forget your inhaler,” I said.

“I tucked it into his side pocket at six fifteen,” Renee said.

She snatched up her purse, nudged the garage door open with her elbow, and left the kitchen door leaning against its frame.

I picked up my blue mug, went through the utility room, and stepped out into the two-car garage.

By eleven the house was silent apart from the low drone of the air conditioner unit tucked behind the side fence.

The garage floor held on to the dry morning heat and smelled of motor oil and old cardboard boxes stacked four high against the back wall.

Those sixteen boxes were all that remained of my forty years in Tucson, squeezed down into heavy tape and black marker after Harold passed away.

I knelt down on the concrete and opened the top box, the one labeled Kitchen Small Items.

I dug past two terry cloth dish towels and a plastic bag of curtain rings until my fingers found the little paper envelope at the bottom.

Inside was the yellow paint swatch from our breakfast nook on Elm Street, the exact soft-butter shade Harold had painted it for me in 1984.