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farmers’ market in Florida. She was always on my mom to build a website like Peter the Potter and take custom orders like Peter the Potter and make garden gnomes like Peter the Potter. She thought he must be rich because there was always a huge line of old people waiting to buy his stuff. My mom thinks he’s a hack. It drove her nuts. I just thought I’d spare her the annoyance.”
    Julia walked into the kitchen, fished the flyers out of the recycling bin, and smoothed them on the counter.
    Meredith raised her eyebrows at her mother. “I thought making ceramic gnomes was undignified and small?”
    “Right, small. So I was thinking elves.” Julia managed a little smile to accompany her little joke.
    “You’re keeping flyers for sentimental value?” Meredith wondered.
    “Nagging from the great beyond,” said Julia. “Best kind.”

    On Thursday, everyone needed a break. Uncle Jeff and Aunt Maddie took Kyle and Julia for a fancy lunch at their fancy hotel. Dash and Meredith—secretly, guiltily thrilled—went through Livvie’s jewelry.
    “Grandma would say toss it all,” declared Meredith giddily from the center of the bed surrounded by piles of pearls, gold chains, pewter charms, fake and real diamond necklaces, jade bracelets, and giant rings. Some of it was valuable. Most of it was not. Some of it was gorgeous. Most of it was not. She was wearing three strands of pearls (white, pink, and mother-of), two gold necklaces (one with a locket that wouldn’t open, one with a poodle charm from when Livvie’d owned a dog—before Meredith’s time), a newly paired pair of earrings (one dangly silver hoop, one blue stud), and four rings which ranged from Livvie’s wedding band to a red-and-purple plastic one Meredith had won for her at a fair in sixth grade. Dash had on one very fake diamond tiara, a macaroni necklace he had made himself, rings on every single finger (few of them even as elegant as the red-and-purple plastic one), and, over his heart, competing ivory brooches.
    “Give me one of those,” said Meredith.
    “They’re a matched set,” Dash protested.
    “One’s a dragon and one’s a tiger.”
    “Exactly. They’re going to duke it out. We have to see who wins.”
    He looped a charm bracelet around his ankle. It dangled four gold pendants with silhouettes of Jeff, Julia, Dash, and Meredith as babies.
    “You’re taking all the good stuff,” Meredith whined.
    “Girl, I am rocking this family anklet. You could not pull this off.”
    “At least give me the tiara.”
    “Okay look, four piles,” said Dash. “One for your mom, one for you, one for me, and one for OLSA.”
    “OLSA?”
    “Old Ladies’ Salvation Army.”
    “Even they wouldn’t want some of this.”
    “Grandma would want me to have these,” said Dash, holding up clip-on coral sun and moon earrings.
    “Grandma would have said those earrings are hideous,” said Meredith.
    “They’re hers.”
    “And I’m sure they were very stylish when she bought them in 1947, but they are not now.”
    “I will rock these earrings,” said Dash, clipping them on.
    “Do her proud,” said Meredith.

    On Friday, they were down to what was left. It was a lot, and it wasn’t much. Her telephone, her knitting supplies, her junk drawer full of what everyone’s junk drawer is full of—Scotch tape and extra scissors and delivery menus and expired coupons and rubber bands and paper clips and empty key chains. They found M&M’s she’d hidden for Meredith and Dash one afternoon when they were five and bored (they had found most of them but not all, apparently) and VCR tapes that had fallen behind the TV and unused coloring books either forgotten from when she had small grandchildren or maybe just in case any little kids stopped by. And all her furniture. They’d called the actual Salvation Army and were waiting for them to come by, and Uncle Jeff was on the phone with a real estate agent—it got that far—before Meredith said:
    “I’m