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stacks of magazines from before the war. Toys went up there when I outgrew them, to be stored against the day when I had children of my own. It was the family history, to be opened up again for each successive generation in turn.
    I’d thought about cleaning it out after my parents died, but I’d never gotten around to it. Instead, I’d simply left instructions with Carl that the attic was not to be disturbed unless the roof needed work. I might not have had the time to touch that stuff, but that didn’t mean anyone else had the right to do so.
    The last room in the house was a mudroom that had been added in the sixties, more of a shed tacked on to the main building than anything else. It held the washer and dryer, things Mother had insisted on, and about a thousand half-empty bottles of household supplies. Most of them were no doubt worthless, but I figured they had squatter’s rights. After all, they’d beenthere longer than I had. A door led to the outside, a relic of the days when the washing went outside to dry. To my knowledge, it hadn’t been used in years.
    There had been a shed once, but it had long since fallen in on itself. No barn, either, and don’t think the neighbors didn’t tut-tut about that. Good land going to waste, that’s what they thought about our place, but Father made enough money that he didn’t need to work the land. “Let it rest a few years,” he told me when I asked about it. “It’s certainly earned it.” And so the long grass grew tall and the pine trees and black locust shot up when they didn’t think anyone was looking. It would take a full summer’s worth of hard work to make the land ready for farming. Trees would need to be cut down, stumps would need to be pulled, and a whole lot of soil would need to get turned. Father had left that job for me, and I figured to leave it for whoever came after. In the meantime, though, it made things what might be called “scenic,” and that was good enough for me.
    It was nearly suppertime when I finally stepped out the kitchen door and onto the porch to do the day’s labor. It was hot, and the air felt as thick as the cotton ball clouds that lurked in packs overhead. It put a smile on my face—good old North Carolina weather. I’d always laughed when the people I’d known in Boston had complained about the summers there. It was like hearing a rich kid complain about how he got the Porsche instead of the Mercedes. They wouldn’t know real heat if it wrapped them up and squeezed tight.
    I filled my lungs with some good clean country air and started down the stairs to the driveway. Two steps down, my footfall made an unexpected sound. I pulled up short, looking down to see what I’d done.
    An envelope rested there under my toe, now marked with theprint of my shoe. The dirt outlined half the imprint of a key, no doubt Carl’s. He had indeed said all he’d meant to say to me, it seemed, so I pocketed the key and crumpled up the envelope for later deposit in the trash. The fact that I hadn’t heard Carl’s truck in the driveway was puzzling, but I put it down to the fact that sound didn’t carry well through Grandfather Logan’s walls. With a shrug, I went back to the business of unloading the car—without Carl’s help.
    Not that I’d actually expected help, mind you, but I hadn’t
not
expected it, either.
    Most of what was still in the Audi were odds and ends—the bits and pieces I hadn’t trusted to the truck or found a safe carton for. There were more clothes, a few pairs of shoes that I could still wear and several others I didn’t dare try, and more handkerchiefs than one man should probably own. Bookends, desk accessories, and a wallet full of CDs; that was the sort of thing I’d stuffed into the backseat and trunk. Somewhere in there was a box full of papers and a laptop, but I didn’t feel any great urgency to rescue either one. They reminded me of Boston more than the desk lamp or the old Red Sox cap did. So I