Her fingers sifted through them, not really knowing what she was looking for. At the bottom, she found a crumpled photograph of her dad holding her as a baby, both of them covered in hay and laughing. She blinked hard. Moved on. The next bag was more of the same: notebooks with pages stuck together, expired canned beans, a broken wall clock still set to 6:13.
Then came a wine bottle—dusty but intact. She turned it over and smiled bitterly. A 1993 cabernet with a post-it on it: “For a day worth remembering.” The third bag fought her. The plastic stretched and refused to tear, so she picked it up and slammed it against the concrete wall in frustration.