“Then a stray memory would drop into my mind, like a tiny thread that falls from a skirt hem onto the floor, alone, singular, and I would re-remember Samone in his workshop at the back of the garage, sitting on his red stool, bending over, sanding a piece of wood he'd found on a hunting trip, lifting its grain up and out and leaving its ego on the floor in tiny piles of sawdust.

It hurt so much to hear the loudness of the tap of the string in my mind and the crash of the sawdust falling rhythmically over it to make a mountain of memories best kept in the garage.”