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nursery.”
    I shook my head. “I still have my own house here, you know. And there are a couple friends I should connect with, but I will certainly help you.”
    I hadn’t heard much from my neighbors over the last few weeks and I had lots of catching up to do. So often socializing plans were hatched while we were all out in our yards—impromptu barbeques, trips to the community pool, things like that. So it wasn’t terribly odd none of them had called. But I kind of wished they had.

CHAPTER 4

    “SEE THIS TEAPOT?” DODY ASKED, waving it at me from her seat at the kitchen island. “It belonged to a member of the French Resistance during World War II. Walter and I bought it from this darling little shop in Paris.”
    I looked over from my precarious perch on a wobbly stepstool. Actually it was the teapot I’d given her for her fiftieth birthday. It was from Sears. I didn’t have the heart to correct her.
    “Pretty.” I nodded.
    “Isn’t it? I love things that have a story to them.” She stroked the side of the pot.
    Every relic in Dody’s house had some story attached, although more often than not one that wasn’t true. Our family often joked that Dody remembered everything, whether it happened that way or not.
    “Thanks for letting me practice on your kitchen,” I said.
    The kids and I were back in Bell Harbor and today I was working on Dody’s pantry. If I could get this episode of Hoarders organized, I could tackle anything.
    I was still contemplating my leap into going professional. I’d done some online research and discovered there was a National Association of Professional Organizers. Figures they’d be organized enough to have a national association, right? They even offered training sessions. There was one close to Bell Harbor in a couple of weeks. Dody said that was a sign from the Universe. I was not convinced. Still, this gave me the perfect excuse to clear away thirty-plus years of Dody-debris.
    So far I’d found eleven jars of uniquely colored homemade jellies, potatoes that had nearly taken root into the shelf boards, a variety of ground, milled, pressed, and whole flaxseeds, a thirty-pound bag of brown rice, and a box of crackers that would require carbon dating to establish an age. All of that was stashed amid dried finger paints, glittery pine cones, tarantula food, a tambourine signed by Elton John, an Obama bobblehead, three sock puppets, and a variety of board-game pieces.
    I plucked at something high on a shelf. “Why are there peacock feathers in here?”
    “Careful with those!” Dody hopped from her chair and took them. “Jasper gave those to me for Mother’s Day one year. I wondered where they’d gotten off to.” She looked at them lovingly for half a second then jabbed them into a potted houseplant.
    I pulled out another chess pawn. “What’s with all the chess pieces?”
    “Oh, those are to remind me I don’t know how to play.”
    “Naturally.”
    I lifted the lid off a shoebox. “Pictures.”
    “Really? Let me see those.”
    I handed them over.
    Dody pushed back the oversized sleeves of her Red Wings jersey and started flipping through the box.
    “Look, here’s one of Walter riding an elephant in India. Or was that at the zoo?”
    I sneezed from the dust and then peeked at the picture. It was definitely not taken at the Bell Harbor zoo. “I’m guessing India.”
    She nodded. “I didn’t go on that trip. Jasper was a baby. Here’s one of Fontaine’s Mohawk. I’m glad that look didn’t last. Oh, goodness, here’s one of your mother and me. When was that?” She tapped the picture against her head as if to prod the memory. “I think it was the day our pop took me to get my driver’s permit.” She looked back at the photo. “Oh, yes! See how I’m holding it up? That was right before I drove his Ford into the side of the garage.”
    “You drove his car into a wall?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Not on purpose!”
    Tales of my aunt’s mishaps were so