pictures out from under the couch, from behind the screen. The unfinished portrait of her husband. "Oh, Joe, I wish you were here to help Jodie," she whispered.
What heaps of forgotten things were hidden by the divan's denim skirts—the box of Christmas-tree ornaments, the old Art Interchanges, Jodie's Dormouse costume for the scenes from "Alice in Wonderland" at school. She had put it away, thinking he could use it again some day—had he ever been as small as that?
Each person who had lived in the house seemed to have left something in the studio, as one tide brings glass-brown seaweed to a pool in the rocks, another a fluted shell, another a crab scuttling sideways on fragile blue claws, stirring up a white cloud of sand. Joe and Jodie, Lizzie Kelley—here was the awful sofa pillow Lizzie had embroidered with poppies for a Christmas surprise—Charlotte's Gibson pictures behind the screen, Aunt Sarah's big chair, humble forgotten treasures of Carrie's, Effa's lost whisk broom, Hope's blackboard and colored chalks. Only Evelyn had left no trace behind her.
Kate piled the things up in her own room, pushed them under her bed. Plenty of time to put them away properly later. Up in the attic she found Joe's old toy theater, his tool chest, and the boxes of scenery he had made, and carried them down.
Her hot wet face was dust streaked; she had broken two finger nails. She would not admit to herself that
