By four o’clock, Ellen had packed six boxes and her mother had unpacked two.
“You have three strainers,” Ellen said.
“And apparently I’m taking all three.”
Outside, her father was working on the gate. They were moving on Saturday to a smaller house in town, and he had decided this was the afternoon to fix the latch.
Ellen wrote KITCHEN on another carton. The October light reached across the table, catching the flour in the seams of the wood.
At the back of a drawer, beneath a book of appliance instructions, she found an envelope.
It had gone soft at the corners. Someone had written her mother’s name in small, careful letters.
“This yours?”
Nora looked up from the cupboard.
“That stays with me.”
Ellen offered it to her, but her mother had both hands around a stack of plates.
“You can read it.”
The paper inside was thin enough that the writing showed through. Ellen eased it open along the old folds.
May 1944. Somewhere in England.
Her father had been twenty-two.
“Out loud,” Nora said. “I’m listening.”
Nora,
You keep saying there is nothing to write about. Tell me about Tuesday, then. What did you have for supper? Did the rain come through over the stove again? Has Mrs. Bell brought your good scissors back?
I tried to picture the kitchen last night and couldn’t remember which side of the window you keep the sugar. Isn’t that a foolish thing to lose sleep over? I can remember the little chip in the green bowl. I can’t put the bowl anywhere.
Tell me where you sit when you have your coffee. Tell me what you can see from there.
I’m getting along all right. A fellow here snores worse than your uncle, which I would not have thought possible.
Write soon. Leave in the ordinary things.
Will
Something struck the gate outside. Her father said a word Ellen had heard him say over every repair he had ever attempted.
Nora smiled without turning around.
Ellen looked down at the letter again.
“You kept this in with the refrigerator book?”
“It was in the drawer first.”
“Why this one?”
Her mother set the plates down.
“I’d been trying to write him a good letter.”
“A good letter?”
“Something worth sending all that way. I’d get half a page done and start over.”
Nora took a dish towel from the counter and ran it around the rim of a plate that was already clean.
“I was cross with him, too.”
Ellen waited.
“For being there. Which wasn’t fair. I knew it wasn’t fair, so I couldn’t write that either.”
From outside came the scrape of the gate opening, then closing.
“Did you answer?”
“Two sheets. Both sides.”
“About Tuesday?”
“Mostly about those scissors.”
Mrs. Bell, it turned out, had lent them to her sister. Her sister had used them to cut a piece of carpet. Nora had walked over to get them back and stayed for supper, then come home furious with herself for enjoying it.
“I told him all of that. And about the rain. And that I’d started having my coffee in his chair because mine got the morning sun right in my eyes.”
Ellen glanced at the chair beside the window.
“That one?”
“We’ve had other chairs.”
Nora held out her hand for the letter. She folded it easily, without looking at the creases.
“I used to read it before I wrote to him. When I thought I had nothing.”
The kitchen drawer was empty now. Ellen wiped a pale rectangle where the envelope had lain. Around it were crumbs, two bent paper clips, and a little screw nobody would ever identify.
“I could put it with the photographs,” she said.
“Put it in my bag.”
Her father came through the back door carrying a screwdriver and the old latch.
“Try that now.”
“We believe you,” Nora said.
“Somebody ought to try it.”
Ellen went outside. The gate opened without lifting it. When she let go, it swung shut and caught with a neat, unfamiliar click.
She opened it once more.
Through the kitchen window, her mother was holding up the green sugar bowl. Her father shook his head. Nora put it into a box anyway, wrapping it in a dish towel instead of newspaper.
Ellen came back in.
“Works beautifully.”
“Been meaning to get around to it.”
“For a little while,” Nora said.
Her father inspected a mark the screwdriver had left on his palm.
“What were you two talking about?”
“Mrs. Bell’s scissors.”
He looked at Nora. Then he laughed, a short, surprised sound.
Ellen left the next carton folded against the wall. She found the envelope where her mother had set it, slipped it into the inside pocket of Nora’s bag, and pulled out a chair.
“Tell me about the carpet,” she said.