I walked there the next morning. The door was propped open with a cinder block, and I could hear the sound of a drill from inside. I stood at the foot of the staircase that led up to the slightly sagging porch and placed my hand on the worn railing.

The sound of the drill stopped and I heard heavy footfalls on the wooden floor. A woman emerged out onto the porch with a pack of cigarettes in her hand. She had hair shorter than mine and was wearing the same beige cargo shorts and white t-shirt I was, although of course they looked better on her. She looked at me curiously.

“Oh, are you Steve’s son? Here,” she said. She turned around and grabbed a tool belt from a milk crate next to the door. “He’s not here today. This is yours. You’re gonna need some gloves, too, maybe better pants, and some boots.”

“Hi,” I said, taking the tool belt from her. “What’s your name?”

“Irvine. You’re Kieran, right?”

I remembered that Dad had said Irv at breakfast. “Uh, everyone calls me K,” I said, on a whim.

“Your dad doesn’t call you that,” she said matter-of-factly. She lit a cigarette and pushed her bangs out of her face. She didn’t wait for my response. “Ever worked with your hands before, K?”

“Not really.”

“That’ll be ok for now. We’re just movin’ things out today.”

“Ok.”

I stood there, waiting for her to finish smoking. She gestured to the spot next to her on the porch. I sat down next to her.

“So, uh, how do you know him?”

“I was his manager at Stella’s in Ypsilanti. Good guy, really reliable, never had trouble with him, y’know? When he got this crazy windfall inheritance, he asked if I wanted to work for him, ‘cause I have some experience with, like, construction and remodeling. I’m handy. He literally never shut up about the bike shop for the last, like, four months.” She had a high, scratchy little voice.

“For sure,” I said.

She stubbed the cigarette out on the sole of her work boot and tossed it into the yard. “This must be weird for you,” she said. “Given that it’s your grandmother’s house and all.”

“Not really,” I said. “I was never here much.”

“Sure,” she said. “Wanna get started?”

We went inside. The living room was unrecognizable — boxes everywhere, furniture turned over, curtains pooled on the floor by the windows. It looked like she had been in the process of disassembling a table comprised of four thick slabs of varnished wood holding up a thick lacquered top. That was it, that was my grandmother's table. Huh.