At 11:00 AM on Sunday, Patrice was hosting brunch in my courtyard.
Dawn parked her pickup at the curb and turned off the engine.
"You want me to come?"
"Stay with the box."
The card box sat on her passenger seat with the belt across it.
I'd slept four hours on her couch after the cake went to the ER.
I was still in yesterday's scrubs.
The Farwell townhomes shared one brick courtyard.
Someone had set up a mimosa table in it.
White cloth, two pitchers, a tray of kringle.
Forty guests stood around it holding plastic flutes.
Most of them had driven in for the wedding.
Some had their suitcases with them.
One of Bryce's cousins was filming on her phone.
An easel stood by the mimosa table.
On it was an 8×10 in a silver frame.
It was me, at the engagement party.
I was holding a check.
Patrice had her arm around me.
We were both smiling.
Somebody had tied a white ribbon on one corner.
I remembered the flash.
Forty people had clapped.
I walked past it to Unit 3.
My key didn't go in.
I tried it twice anyway.
The lock was new, the brass still bright.
"We packed for you, sweetheart."
Patrice came across the bricks in a camel wrap.
She pointed at the dumpster corral.
Fourteen black contractor bags were lined up against the fence.
My things.
A box truck was backing in beside them, beeping.
BRUECKNER MECHANICAL, INC.
Two men in work jackets were already lifting bags into the back.
"Curt's LLC owns the unit," Patrice said.
"The locksmith came at seven."
"Curt's keeping your things safe at the shop."
I paid my rent by app every month.
I'd never asked whose name was on the other end.
"I've lived here fourteen months," I said.
"That makes me a tenant."
"It makes you a guest who left."
"Guests don't pay rent."
"Guests don't walk out on weddings either."
Patrice turned to the mimosa table.
"She took twenty-five thousand of ours."
"And shut the party on everyone."
"You all drove in for nothing."
Somebody's aunt shook her head at me.
A man by the kringle said, "They locked her out?"
His wife shushed him.
Two more bags went up into the truck.
I stepped back to the curb and called the non-emergency line.
The officer was polite.
I told him about the lock.
I told him about the truck.
"Lockouts are civil, ma'am."
"You'd take that up in court."
"Can you stop the truck?"
"No, ma'am."
"It's a civil matter."
He asked if I was safe.
I said I was standing in a courtyard next to a mimosa table.
I thanked him.
I'm a nurse.
I thank everyone.
Behind me, the door of Unit 3 opened.
Jordyn came out.
She was wearing Bryce's Marquette hoodie.
The sleeves were rolled twice.
His tux hung over her arm in dry-cleaner plastic.
She saw me and stopped on the step.
"I'm just getting his things," she said.
Bryce wasn't there.
His hoodie was.
"It'll need two cleanings," I said.
Jordyn's face went the color of her lipstick.
Nobody at the mimosa table said anything.
The cousin kept filming.
I walked to the fence.
Someone had numbered the bags in silver marker.
The workers had started at the far end.
Bag one was closest to me.
I tore it open with my fingers.
Towels.
My winter coat.
My mother's red sewing tin, wedged under a boot.
The tin was older than me.
Mom kept her blue thread in it.
It was the same spool she'd used for the R.M.
I took the tin.
One of the workers got to that bag with his hands out.
He looked at the tin, then at me.
He waited.
I stepped back.
He picked up what was left of bag one.
I walked to the easel.
I worked the townhouse key off my ring.
Then the garage opener.
I set them both on the easel ledge, under the photo.
Right under my own smiling face.
"Keep the key."
"I kept the receipts."
The cousin turned her phone on the key.
Patrice looked at it like it was a tip.
A worker pulled the roll door shut.
The truck pulled out with thirteen bags and the rest of bag one.
I watched it turn the corner onto Farwell Avenue.
Patrice came close and dropped her voice to honey.
"Monday at noon is still good, sweetheart."
"Curt will even carry the bags back in."
"Come inside, sign the paper, take a shower at least."
"You smell like a hospital."
At the curb, Dawn started the pickup.
I tucked the tin under my arm.
"I'll shower at work."