- I put everything on the counter.
- My driver’s license. The rental account paperwork, which I’d found in our filing cabinet at home. And the receipt.
- “My husband arranged this,” I said. “Without telling me. I never authorized the sale. I never even knew about it until about two hours ago.”
- Hal put his reading glasses on. He picked up the receipt and read it. He read it carefully. Twice.
- Then he turned to his computer and typed for a while. He clicked through a few screens.
- “Well,” he said finally. “The rental account’s in your name, ma’am. You’re the primary on it. Always have been. Your husband’s listed as an authorized user. He’s got gate access, and he’s got a key.” He took off his glasses. “But having a key to a unit doesn’t mean you own what’s inside it.”
- He looked at me over the counter.
- “I’m going to put that collection on hold,” he said. “Nobody’s taking anything out of B-17 today. Not until we sort this out.”
- I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
- My mother squeezed my arm.
- Hal picked up the phone on the counter. He dialed a number from the receipt.
- It rang on speaker. A man answered.
- “Rivera Custom Cabinetry, this is Tomás.”
- “Tomás, this is Hal Brennan over at Route 40 Self Storage. About your pickup at eleven. Unit B-17.”
- “Oh, sure. Yeah. We’re loading the truck now. Be there in about an hour.”
- “I’m going to need you to hold off on that,” Hal said. “There’s a dispute over ownership. I’ve got the unit’s account holder standing right in front of me. She says she never authorized any sale.”
- There was a long pause on the other end.
- “What?” Tomás said. “But I paid. In full. Two weeks ago. Cashier’s check. I’ve got the receipt.”
- “I paid the husband,” he added.
- I leaned toward the phone.
- “Mr. Rivera, my name is Sheila. Those were my father’s tools. He died three years ago. And I never agreed to sell them. I didn’t know anything about it until this morning.”
- Another long pause.
- “Your father’s,” Tomás said slowly.
- “Yes.”
- “Oh, man.” He let out a long breath. “Oh, man. He told me… your husband told me they were his. He said he’d inherited them and didn’t have any use for them. He said he wanted them gone before he went on vacation.”
- “They were never his,” I said. “They were my father’s. And then mine.”
- I heard him put his hand over the phone and say something to somebody in the background. Then he came back.
- “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’m not going to come take your dad’s stuff, ma’am. I’m not that guy. I don’t want anything that came from that kind of situation. I’ll sort it out with your husband. Can I get his number?”
- Hal read it off the receipt.
- “I’m really sorry, ma’am,” Tomás said. “About your dad. And about all this.”
- “It’s not your fault,” I said. And I meant it.
- After he hung up, Hal typed some more on his computer.
- “I’ve removed your husband’s access,” he said. “Gate code’s dead. If he tries to get in, the gate won’t open. And I’ll put a note on the account that nothing leaves that unit without you here in person.”
- “Thank you, Hal,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
- He nodded. Then he looked at me for a long moment.
- “My wife’s dad had a shop like that,” he said quietly. “When he passed, her brother sold it all in a garage sale for four hundred bucks. Before she could get there.” He shook his head. “She still talks about it. Twenty years later.”
- He handed me back my license.
- “Go on back,” he said. “Take your time.”
- At least the equipment wasn’t going anywhere that morning.
- But I still hadn’t seen what Dereck had already taken.
- My mother and I walked down the long concrete hallway together. It was cool and quiet, and our footsteps echoed. Rows and rows of orange metal doors.
- B-17 was near the end on the left.
- I unlocked the padlock with my key. I pulled up the metal door. It rolled up with a loud rattle.
- The smell hit me first.
- Wood dust. Old cardboard. And underneath it, faint, a trace of lemon. The furniture polish Dad always used. He’d rub it into everything. His workbench. His cabinets. His tool handles.
- I stood in the doorway and closed my eyes and breathed it in.
- For a second, just one, I was nine years old, sitting on an upside-down paint bucket in the corner of the garage, listening to the oldies station.
- Then I opened my eyes and looked around.
- His workbench was standing against the back wall, where we’d left it. The big oak one. I walked over and ran my hand along the corner. Found the initials. G.C. and S.C. Still there.
- The shop cabinets were stacked along the right side. All six of them.
- The table saw, the drill press, the band saw, and the lathe were all under the canvas tarps where we’d left them, along the left wall.
- And there on the middle shelf was his blue metal toolbox. The one he carried to every job. The one with GENE scratched into the lid with a nail.
- I let out a breath.
- It was still here. Most of it was still here.
- But then I saw the shelves.
- There were empty spaces.
- Gaps. On the shelves along the back wall, where the smaller things had been. Spaces where the dust was lighter. Clean rectangles in the gray film on the shelving, where boxes had been sitting for three years and weren’t anymore.
- My mother saw them too.
- “Sheila,” she said slowly. “Wasn’t the smaller tool chest right there? The red one? With the drawers?”
- “Yes.”
- I walked along the shelf.
- The wooden crate where I’d packed his hand planes was gone. He’d had eleven of them. Some of them older than him. Some of them had belonged to his father. He’d spent years finding them at estate sales and flea markets and restoring them one by one.
- Gone.
- So was the little wooden box. The box with his measuring tools. His squares. His levels. His marking gauges.
- The box where I’d put his brass measuring tape, right on top. So it would be the first thing I saw.
- I stood there staring at the empty spaces.
- Dereck hadn’t just sold it.
- He’d already started taking things.
- My mother came over and stood beside me. She didn’t say anything. She just put her hand on my back.
- We heard a car pull into the parking lot outside. Then the slam of a car door.
- Then footsteps. Fast footsteps. Coming down the long concrete hallway.
- Dereck came around the corner about twenty minutes after we’d arrived.
- He must have driven straight from the airport after getting the luggage. He was still wearing his travel clothes. The jacket with all the pockets. His sneakers.
- He stopped when he saw me standing outside the open door of B-17.
- “Sheila,” he said. “What are you doing?”
- “Stopping a sale I never agreed to.”
- He glanced back over his shoulder. Toward the office at the front of the building.
- “Did you tell them not to release the equipment?”
- “Yes.”
- He let out a sharp breath. Almost a hiss.
- “Do you realize what you’ve done?”
- I stared at him.
- I actually laughed. I couldn’t help it.
- “What I’ve done?”
- “The buyer already paid,” Dereck said. “Two weeks ago. In full.”
- “Then you’ll need to give him his money back.”
- “It’s not that simple.”
- “Why not?”
- He looked away.
- He looked at the wall. At the floor. At the orange door of the unit next to ours.
- He didn’t answer.
- My mother stepped out of the unit and stood beside me.
- Dereck saw her and flinched a little. He’d always been a little afraid of my mother. Most people are. She’s small, but she’s fierce.
- “Hello, Vivienne,” he said.
- “Dereck,” she said. Cool as ice.
PART 5
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