Warren called on a Sunday afternoon.

He asked whether he could visit without Marlene.

I agreed to meet him at a public café halfway between Asheville and the cabin.

He arrived with my mother’s old wooden recipe box.

Its brass hinge was bent; one corner still bore the purple paint I had spilled when I was nine.

“I found it in the attic,” he said.

“Marlene said you didn’t want anything from the house.”

“She never asked.”