on Calloway Branch, and it came to me with the forwarded mail, and I—" His voice did something. He stopped and started over. "I put it in my glove box. It's still there. I didn't answer it. I told myself I'd do it after the estate sale, and then after the closing, and then after the move. I told myself I'd tell you when you were eighteen, like Ivy said. I told myself a lot of things. The truth is I didn't know how to bring all that into the house." He didn't look at Carla when he said it. He didn't have to. "I didn't know how to open that wall."
The engine ticked. Over at the church, a woman in a cardigan came up the basement steps with a ring of keys and started across the gravel toward the side door.
Carla opened her door. She had it open and was out before Dad or I could move, walking fast across the lot, then running, her lanyard swinging against her chest, saying, "Opal! Opal, wait! Don't lock it. Please don't lock it."
* * *
Second Blessings Thrift is in the basement of Harlow Fork Methodist, down a flight of concrete stairs with a handrail painted the same green as everything else in the church that was painted in 1985. It smells like every thrift store in the world: dust and mothballs and old perfume and the particular burnt sweetness of a dehumidifier running full tilt. There are racks of clothes sorted by size, and a wall of mismatched dishes, and a glass case of costume jewelry where I bought a rhinestone brooch for my mother when I was seven with money I'd gotten for my birthday. In the back is a door marked SORTING – VOLUNTEERS ONLY, and behind that door, that afternoon, were about forty black contractor bags and a long folding table and a woman named Opal Hensley, who was seventy-six and had known me since I was born, and who looked at the three of us crowding through her doorway like we were a tornado she had been warned about on the radio.
"Lord," she said. "Wade. What on earth."
"Opal," said Dad. "The boxes from our house. The ones that came in at two."
"Well, they're done, hon. The boys brought 'em down and we sorted 'em right off, me and Bev, because we had the time. Kitchen stuff's on the shelves already. Books went in the book room. Linens—" She waved at the folding table, where a stack of folded sheets and towels sat with a hand-lettered sign that said $1 EA. "What's the matter?"