What I Left In The Foyer
The manila envelope stayed on the foyer bench through the walk-through and through the closing and through the moving truck, which came on a Friday from a company out of Raleigh, and through the first weekend the nurse practitioner and her husband spent in the house, which they spent mostly on air mattresses eating take-out shrimp. I know this because the nurse practitioner — whose name was Audra, and who had, between the walk-through and the closing, become the kind of client who was going to call me in the future when she was worried about something — called me on the Monday morning to ask what was in the envelope and whether she was allowed to open it.
"Audra," I said, "it's for you. You may open it whenever you like. I'd prefer you open it in the foyer, where I left it, because that's where it needs to be opened. But there is nothing in it that will do you or your husband any harm."
"Okay."
"Call me back after."
She called me back forty minutes later. She had been crying a little, but not in a way she was unhappy about.
"Marce, there's a letter. In a plain envelope. Addressed to a Nola Pruitt. It's — it's very old. And a photograph of a woman in an obituary, cut out of a newspaper. And a note from you, that says *please keep these in the house for one year and then dispose of them however you wish, with thanks from M. Halloran and the previous residents*. Marce, what