Trunks with labels from faraway places. Antlers from deer and what I thought was an elk. Perfectly good chairs, tables, and bookcases that someone had managed to haul up the tiny attic stairs. Boxes and boxes, some full, some not, some labeled, most not. And then there was my favorite, the magazines. Stacks of them, piled hither and yon over the decades, all full of advertisements for products that were sort of familiar, but not quite.

And now Celeste was cleaning it all out, thinking to convert the attic into usable space. Space for what, she hadn’t decided, but she wasn’t about to let that small fact stop her. Celeste had cautiously approached Aunt Frances about the idea, and my aunt had laughed, saying she’d thought about doing that exact thing years ago but had never gotten around to it.

“What’s next?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips.

“Are you sure Frances doesn’t want anything from up here?” Celeste looked around. “I mean, sure-sure-sure?”

“That’s what she said.” I averted my eyes from the stuffed owl Celeste was bobbing up and down. Way too lifelike for an attic environment. “That big pile of boxes in that dark corner is mine, and I promise I’ll get those out of here soon. But Aunt Frances said if she’d wanted any of this crap, she would have taken it with her. It’s all yours.”

“And yours.” Celeste put the owl down and patted its head, releasing a small cloud of dust. “It’s your history, too.”

I appreciated the sentiment, but the attic at the house was already half full with castoff objects, some from former owners, some from Rafe, and some from my own self because the dining room bookcases hadn’t been installed. Still . . . “I wouldn’t mind some of the magazines.”

“Perfect.” She pushed an empty box my way. “Fill ’er up.”

Um.

Celeste noted my hesitation. “No time like the present,” she said briskly. “If not now, when?”

That was a good point, so I sat down next to a heaping stack and started sorting into piles of Want and Don’t Want. Car, truck, and fishing magazines went into the Don’t Want pile, along with knitting, needlecraft, and sewing magazines. All very interesting for someone, but that someone wasn’t in the attic doing the sorting.

After a few minutes, I realized the Want pile was ten times higher than the Don’t Want pile. This shouldn’t have been a surprise—I was a librarian, after all—but there was no way I was going to haul more than one box of these things into the house.

“One of each,” I murmured to myself. Because this was for the sake of nostalgia, and did I really need more than one copy of a 1953 Popular Mechanics? Or all of the Seventeen magazines from 1968?