Terry found me out there by the stump where the treehouse tree had been before a storm took it down twenty years ago, and he stood next to me, and neither of us said anything, and that was right.

We kept very little, in the end.

He took our father’s tools, because he builds things now too, I learned — decks, birdhouses, the way Dad did — and I took our mother’s recipe box even though the cookie recipe isn’t in it, because her handwriting is, on every card, and I find I cannot be in a world with none of her handwriting in it.

It surprised us both, how little we wanted.