I’d already had a busy day, and it was only two o’clock. This wasn’t shaping up to be my normal day off. Usually I did laundry, cleaned house, went to the store, read, paid bills. . . . But today was so pretty I wanted to stay outside. I wanted to work on something that would allow me to think at the same time. There sure was plenty to mull over.

I looked at the flower beds around the house and decided to weed. This was my least-favorite chore, maybe because it was the one I’d often been assigned as a child. Gran had believed we should be brought up to work. It was in her honor that I tried to keep the flower beds looking nice, and now I sighed and made up my mind to get the job done. I’d start with the bed by the driveway, on the south side of the house.

I went over to our metal toolshed, the latest in a series of toolsheds that had served the Stackhouse family over the generations we’d lived on this spot. I opened the door with the familiar mingled feelings of pleasure and horror, because someday I was going to have to put in some serious work cleaning out the interior. I still had my grandmother’s old trowel; there was no telling who’d used it before her. It was ancient but so well taken care of that it was better than any modern substitute. I stepped into the shadowy shed and found my gardening gloves and the trowel.

I knew from watching Antiques Roadshow that there were people who collected old farm implements. This toolshed would be an Aladdin’s cave to such a collector. My family didn’t believe in letting things go if they still worked. Though chock-full, the shed was orderly, because that had been my grandfather’s way. When we’d come to live with him and Gran, he’d drawn an outline for every commonly used tool. That was where he’d wanted that tool to be replaced every time it was used, and that was where it was still kept now. I could reach unerringly for the trowel, which was maybe the oldest tool in the shed. It was heavy, sharper, and narrower than its modern counterparts, but its shape was familiar to my hand.