Thomas looked up at me when I came into the living room. He was trying to free the zipper on the smallest of the cases, which had gotten caught on the lining. And before I could say what seeing the suitcases reminded me of, he responded as if he’d heard my thoughts. “Yeah. I know.”

The only time we’d ever had them laid out was before trips to Ireland. Dad would usually take just one of us with him because we couldn’t afford for everyone to go at the same time. When the suitcases came back from the trip, we’d put our heads inside and breathe in the smell of over there—peat fires, clothes wind-dried in sea air, freshly turned hay. The large blue-and-green-plaid one was his, the one he always took, filling it with cotton sheets, coveralls, socks and underwear he bought in Sears for his brothers and sisters, big tins of Folgers coffee, and reading glasses for half the village. The weeks before he was going home, he’d always be busy shopping for everyone he could think of. Tool kits for a brother, full dish set for a sister. The suitcase had carried so much.

It was usually this time of year he’d be going over, when the sun was so hot that it stunted the grass and he could get away from the lawns for a week or two. Whenever I thought we had nothing of his, I was forgetting the suitcases in the attic.

“Look what else I found.” Thomas nodded toward a small case, plastic but with a pattern that was made to look like it had a weave. It had a handle at the top and a flap that snapped at the bottom. Dad’s Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder. It must have been seven or eight years since I’d seen it. He’d bought it in the early 1960s, maybe when Marie was a baby. Every New Year’s Eve he would bring it out, and at midnight we would each say something into the microphone. We hadn’t done it since Beatrice was born. “The tapes are there, too.” There was a pile of square boxes that held the reels of tape. Each was labeled with names and dates in Dad’s scrawled cursive.

“Is Mom home from work yet?” I asked.

“No. And after she’s getting stuff on Beatrice’s camp list.”

“A flashlight, batteries, and insect repellent,” Beatrice started listing. “A canteen for when we hike in the mountains. Did you even know there were mountains in the South?”

“Where do you think the Appalachians and the Blue Ridge Mountains go, you idiot? Isn’t your teacher teaching you any geography?” Thomas slid the suitcase back toward Beatrice, who was sitting cross-legged, watching him. “Try that now.”