“Let’s go make our beds,” I say to Ivy.

In our room, which is smaller than the rooms either of us had at home, I try to put on a good face and rearrange the cardboard boxes until I find the one that says BED LINENS. We open the box, and we make our beds, which barely fit foot to foot along the wall. I tell Ivy that opening the boxes is kind of like opening presents at Christmas, but she makes a face and says, “That is the dumbest lie you’ve ever tried to feed me.”

I am so surprised by this that I start to laugh and I jump on the empty linens box and squash it. Ivy helps me. We flatten that thing like a pancake.

“That felt good!” she says. So we unpack some more and slowly empty boxes and then demolish them.

After a while, my dad comes in to check our progress and take the empty boxes down to the big recycling container outside.

Even when I hang up the paper lantern I made with Micah, this room does not feel like home. It does not feel like it ever will. I try to remember my dad’s promise, that this is only temporary. And maybe it will be. But for now it mostly feels like sorrow.

The next morning, my dad asks me if I want to come with him to the house for a final walk-through to make sure we didn’t leave anything, and to pick the vegetables from the garden. Since I need to do chores at the Townsends’, this saves me one bike ride, so I agree, even though I don’t want to go back and see our sad empty house again.

When we pull into the driveway, I can tell this is going to be even harder than I thought. My dad gets out first and stands under the Bittersweet Farm sign. Then he unties the ladder from the roof of his van and brings it over. I watch from below as he carefully pries the sign from the garage.

“Help me, will you?” he asks.

I reach up for one end of the sign and hold it above my head while he moves the ladder over to the other end of the sign and loosens it, then lowers it. We carry it over to the van and tie it onto the roof. I don’t ask him what he plans to do with it. And I don’t tell him it feels a little wrong to take it. There’s a long strip of fresh-looking red paint where the sign used to be, and it makes the rest of the garage look even more worn out than it did before.

“I’ve got some things to collect in the garage,” he tells me. “Why don’t you head across the street and get your chores done, and I’ll meet you in the garden.”