Three Suitcases Left in the Rain and Nineteen Million Dollars in Cancun
On the mahogany sideboard behind him, the silver coffee pot sat in the shadows, its polished surface beginning to tarnish in the damp Texas air. Gordon and I had bought it in London thirty years ago, and I remembered the shopkeeper telling us that silver only stays bright when it is used. Now, it was just another heavy object in a house we were leaving behind.
“You do not have to pack everything today,” I said, my voice sounding thin in the high-ceilinged room.
He did not look up from the tape dispenser, his shoulders hunched forward as he pressed the sticky plastic onto the cardboard seams. “The movers are coming for my drafting table on Friday, Mom, and I want to have the smaller things cleared out before they get here.”
I watched him slide a silver-framed photograph of our last family trip to Maine into the side of the box, wrapping it slowly in sheets of white tissue paper. The room felt larger with the bookshelves half-emptied, the shadows stretching long and grey across the hardwood floor where the Persian rug had been rolled back.
