We were in the minivan in ninety seconds. I drove. Dee sat in the back with six labeled tote bags and the chartreuse box on her lap. Harriet took the passenger seat, because, as she put it, “I bagged it, so I’ll unbag it.”
The Second Step truck had already turned the corner. I could not see it. Harriet did not seem worried.
“Reggie has three more pickups on this side of the river,” she said. “I know his route. I book him every week.”
“Every week?”
“I’m very good at my job, Tess.”
“Where’s the next pickup?”
She closed her eyes, like a woman consulting an inner spreadsheet.
“Mrs. Albrecht, Wexler Street, a recliner. Reggie always takes recliners slowly. He has a back.”
I took Calloway to Fifth, then cut through the church parking lot, which I’m fairly sure is illegal. I had done it once before, for a groom who forgot his vows. Wexler Street came up on the left. Halfway down the block, the white truck sat with its back door open and its ramp down.
A man was pushing a brown recliner up the ramp very, very slowly.
“That’s Reggie,” Harriet said fondly.
Reggie Mott was fifty-eight years old and built like a vending machine. He wore a Second Step polo shirt and a back brace over it, like a vest. He saw three women climb out of a minivan at speed and did not look alarmed. He looked like a man who had been chased by donors before.
“Harriet,” he said. “You’re early.”
“You’re early,” said Harriet.
“I’m always early.” He set the recliner down carefully at the top of the ramp. “What’s the problem?”
“There’s been a mistake,” I said. “One of the bags from my apartment. I need something out of it.”
Reggie shook his head slowly. He had the expression of someone about to recite a sacred text.
“Once it’s on the truck,” he said, “it belongs to the truck.”
“That’s not a real rule.”
“It’s my rule. Twenty years. You know how many people chase this truck?
“People change their minds. They say, ‘Oh, I need that lamp back.’ Then they get the lamp home and remember why they gave it away.” He crossed his arms. “The truck protects people from themselves.”
Dee leaned out of the back of the van. “I’m just saying, that’s actually beautiful.”
“Thank you,” said Reggie.
“Mr. Mott,” I said. “There’s a wedding in twenty-five minutes. The bride has no shoes, and I need one pair from one bag.”
He looked doubtful. “Everybody says it’s one pair.”
“I can prove it’s mine.”
“Go on.”
I pulled out my phone and opened the spreadsheet. I didn’t even need to look at it.
“W-088,” I said. “Ivory satin pumps. Pearl 1. Forty-millimeter heel with a rubber cap.
“Left strap resewn in 2019 by a cobbler named Sal, in brown thread instead of white, which still bothers me. Receipt in column K.
“Bought for my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday. I danced with my uncle in them, and he stepped on the left one, which is why it needed Sal.”
Reggie stared at me for a long moment.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I have been doing this for twenty years. Nobody has ever described a donation to me in millimeters.”
“Is that a yes?”
He uncrossed his arms. He stepped aside. “Bag’s under the recliner,” he said. “Mind my back.”
There were eleven black contractor bags in the truck. Ours were at the bottom of the stack. On top of them sat a recliner, a box of encyclopedias, and a floor lamp shaped like a heron.
Harriet and I moved the heron. Dee moved the encyclopedias, which she announced were “all volume R.” Reggie supervised the recliner. He tilted it back three inches with tremendous care, and I reached under and pulled out the first bag.
It was labeled, in Harriet’s crisp tape, ROUND ONE. LOVED. LET GO.
“That’s a lot to put on a bag,” I said.
“I believe in labels,” said Harriet.
I tore it open. W-088 was on top. The satin was creased but clean, and the heel caps were intact. The ivory was exactly the right ivory.
Then I lifted the left shoe and saw the strap.
Sal’s brown thread had held for five years. It had not held for a recliner. The strap hung loose from one side, like a sentence missing its last word.
“Oh,” said Harriet.
“Oh,” said Dee.
“I’ve seen worse,” said Reggie, which was kind and untrue.
Harriet took the shoe from me and turned it over in her hands with professional interest.
“I can sew,” she said. “I sewed my own wedding dress. I also sewed my own divorce papers into a throw pillow, but that’s a different skill set.”
“Can you sew this in eight minutes?”
“I can sew anything,” said Harriet, “if somebody else is driving.”
I looked at my watch. It was 3:36. I thanked Reggie, and he said, “Best of luck to the bride.”
Then he added, gruffly, “Once it’s off the truck, it’s off the truck.” I think it was the closest he could come to a blessing.
Harriet worked on the strap in the passenger seat, with a needle and thread from my emergency kit. She sewed with the steady focus of a surgeon and the language of a sailor. I did not know Harriet Voss knew those words. I suspect Harriet Voss did not know either.
Dee sat in the back with the tote bags. For two lights she said nothing. Then, at the third light, she did.
“I want to explain why I did it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m just saying I want to.” She looked at the bags.
“You spend every Saturday at somebody else’s best day. Every single one. Then you come home and you go into that room and you close the door. I thought the Wall was where you hid.”
The light turned green. I drove.
“It’s not where I hide,” I said. “It’s where I keep things.
“I don’t keep the weddings, because they’re not mine. I keep one piece of every day that mattered to me. A pair of shoes is very small. It fits in a cubby.”
Dee was quiet for a moment.
“You put my house in there,” she said.
“You put your house in there. I just wrote it down.”
Behind me, I heard her sniff once and then say something about pollen. It was a lie. Dee is allergic only to vulnerability.
My phone rang. It was Ollie. I put him on speaker.
“Status,” I said.
“Copy. Corinne is fine. She says Corinne is fine.
“She’s said it eleven times, so I’m a little worried. Lorraine wants your ETA in minutes. She’s standing next to me holding a pen.”
“Six minutes.”
I heard him relay it. I heard Lorraine say “Six,” and the scratch of a pen.
“Also, Felix wants to confirm every heel is capped,” Ollie went on. “He said, and I’m quoting, ‘The floors were here first.’”
“Tell him they’re all capped. Column H. Every one.”
“Copy. He’s asking what column H is.”
“Tell him it’s the column that loves his floors.”
There was a muffled pause. Then Ollie came back. “He says that’s acceptable.”
We turned into the gravel lot of Larkspur Hall at 3:44. The string trio was playing something gentle in the hall. Through the tall windows I could see rows of guests, a hundred and twenty heads, all facing an empty aisle.
Harriet bit off the last thread with her teeth. She held up the shoe. She pulled gently on the strap.
It came away in her hand.
Nobody said anything. The trio began a new piece. It was, unfortunately, very romantic.
“The satin’s too old,” Harriet said finally, quietly. “There’s nothing left to sew into. I’m sorry, Tess. They were loved all the way through.”
I sat with both hands on the wheel. Pearl 1 was gone. There was no other ivory in size seven and a half. I knew that without checking, the way you know your own phone number.
Behind me, there was a rustle of tissue paper.
“Tess,” said Dee.
I turned around. My sister was holding the box Harriet had marked DISCUSS? She had taken the lid off. Inside, under the tissue, a square gold buckle caught the late afternoon light.
“I’m just saying,” said Dee, very gently, “these are a seven and a half.”
Up next: Something Borrowed
Continue to Part 5 →