To which Katie had thought, she would rather live in a Frigidaire shipping carton than have this old shit in her apartment. But she had kept the thought to herself. She knew she had at least a couple of years before she might head off to college, and was hoping this furniture would become so mouse-infested by then that her mother would have it taken to the dump.

God, where was the box of DVDs?

Since most of the stuff they watched was online, they hadn’t had much use for DVDs and Blu-rays in recent years. But back before streaming became a thing, they’d acquired hundreds of discs, and rather than try to sell them, they’d boxed them and tucked them away, despite some objections from Archie. “It’ll give us more shelf space,” his mother had said.

To which Archie had replied, with more than a little trepidation, “And put what in their place. Books?”

The Garrett Blockbuster had been one of the last video rental stores to hang in, but even it had gone under five years ago.

Katie knew that her mother, despite the chaos the garage suggested, was fairly organized, so whatever box those discs went into, there’d be a Magic Marker dvds scribbled on the outside. But as she shuffled boxes around, one caught her attention that was not labeled dvds.

Written on the outside was dad stuff.

The top of the box was not crisscrossed with duct tape, so Katie, after a moment’s hesitation, dug her fingers under the folded cardboard flaps and pulled them up. She reached in and pulled out the first thing she saw: a small plaque that read adam montrose mvp. It didn’t say for what sport.

She set the plaque aside and dug in further. A diecast model of a Corvette, an old paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an actual Harley-Davidson motorcycle manual, a Red Sox baseball cap, an envelope stuffed with canceled checks and old tax papers.

And then, a faded newspaper clipping: Man Killed in Crash Fell Asleep at Wheel, Police Say.

She crumpled it up and looked deeper into the box. There was a three-by-five snapshot, slid into a Plexiglas stand, of Adam Montrose holding a small girl in his arms. In the background, a beach and the ocean beyond. The girl looked to be about two years old, but it was easy to tell, all these years later, who that little girl had grown up to be.

Katie sniffed, and wondered how this picture ended up here. It should be on the dresser in her room. She had no memory of the picture being taken, but guessed this was the Cape Cod beach her parents used to go to, before Archie was born.