Around 4:30, Helen gave up on sleep and scooted down to crawl over Nate’s feet and out of bed. She pulled on the robe hanging from a hook on the door and walked down the narrow hall into the kitchen. The trailer was small and cramped and smelled like mice. It was basically an aluminum shoebox with tiny louvered windows, dark wood paneling, and an iffy electrical system. When you turned on a light, others dimmed. The linoleum floor was peeling up (they’d covered it with throw rugs where they could), and the fake wood paneling on the walls was buckling. There was the closet-sized bedroom that barely fit their full bed, a tiny bathroom, and a living room and kitchen that were really one not-so-big space. The kitchen was galley style, with old metal cabinets that were rusted through in places. Helen had tried to brighten them up by sticking contact paper on them, but it peeled and hung like bits of unattached skin.

When they’d first come to clean out the trailer (Nate carrying her over the rusty threshold like a silly newlywed), they found it full of stuff: ratty old furniture, food in the cupboards and fridge, clothes piled on the shelves in the bedroom; there was even a toothbrush at the sink.

“Anything worth saving?” Nate asked once she’d been over the place with her careful historian’s eye. In addition to loving research, Helen adored old objects and spent a lot of time visiting estate sales and flea markets. What she was drawn to most were the small personal things—old tintype photographs, letters written in smudged and faded ink. Nate didn’t understand her obsession with these objects or her reasons for buying them. “It’s not like you knew these people,” he said.

“No,” she said. “But I do a little bit now, don’t I? Now that I have a piece of their story.”

She felt an attraction to the objects and believed that as long as she held on to them, looked at them from time to time, the people whose lives were captured on paper and in photographs would not be forgotten or completely lost to time.

“Nothing. It’s all junk,” she said, disappointed that they hadn’t found any antique jelly jars, some milk glass, or one piece of well-made furniture worth keeping.

The strangest thing was the table: it was set for two, plates sticky with fossilized food remains and mouse droppings, an unopened bottle of wine and two dusty but empty glasses in the center of the table. “I guess Mr. Decrow wasn’t much of a housekeeper,” Nate had said. They’d hauled it all off to the dump (saving only the wine, which they stuck up on a kitchen shelf), Helen wondering what had interrupted that final dinner; what had stopped them from opening the wine?