So far I’d found dusty boxes of children’s clothes, old costumes, and books. I pulled out a dog-eared copy of The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault and saw my dad’s handwriting in the margins. I pulled out a few more: Orientalism; Distinction; Being and Time; Gender Trouble. At the bottom of the box, there were several volumes of poetry. Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich. A slip of paper poked out of the Rich volume. It looked like a photo, and I tugged it out to see a photo-booth strip of two people laughing at the camera.

They were my parents. My mom looked barely older than me, and there was kind of a baby softness to my dad’s face. They both looked so happy to be pressed together in that photo booth, my dad’s arms encircling my mom as she leaned against him, her eyes bright.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I slid the photo strip back into the Adrienne Rich book, feeling as if I had glimpsed another world. I took out my phone to find a text from Mel.

Checking if you wanna do dyke march Sat? Still planning but we’ll probably leave together from my place in San Rafael. Hope you can make it

I wasn’t sure what to say. I looked down at the box of my dad’s books again, wondering what else was hidden in them. That was when I saw the rectangular black case tucked behind the box. There was something familiar about it, and as soon as I pulled it out, I realized it was my old telescope.

When I was ten years old, Grandpa had given it to me for Christmas. It came unassembled, but he told me I could put it together myself to build the same kind of telescope Galileo had used. Grandpa had ended up helping me, but afterward I had taken it apart and put it back together several times. I’d brought it to Woodacre when we visited in the summer, and he and I would go up to the roof at night to look at the moon and some of the planets. I must have left it here.

A big crash sounded from behind me, and I straightened up. “Joan, are you okay?” I called.

I went back to the storage room and looked through the doorway. The room wasn’t very large, and boxes had been stacked precariously high along one of the walls. One of the boxes must have fallen, because it lay smashed open on the floor. Books and papers were spilling out, and Joan was using her foot to nudge them together.

“I’m fine,” Joan said. “This box broke. Can you help me?”