“She was just leaving,” I said.

“Is she going to take my new watercolors away?”

“No, Toby,” I said.

“Nobody is taking anything away from you.”

We drove back to the apartment at four o’clock, and I spent the rest of the afternoon packing Toby’s books and drawing paper into heavy cardboard boxes.

By six o’clock, eight stacked boxes lined the narrow hallway by the front door.

At six past six, a man in a plain dark windbreaker rang the doorbell.