Forty-six thousand dollars.

It was the first time in nine years I had health insurance in my own name and I cried about that too, in a different way, in the parking lot at orientation.

And in February, unpacking the last of the boxes that had gone straight into the basement and stayed there, I found the wooden case.

It was a cheap thing, pine, with a brass clasp, and I had bought it at twenty for eleven dollars at an art supply store near campus.

Inside were two sets of watercolor pans with the pigment cracked, nine brushes with the ferrules gone green, and a sketchbook.