Marcus sat in his truck with the engine off, watching the heat shimmer off the asphalt. Eight-thirty in the morning and already ninety-four degrees. His phone said ninety-six, but the bank thermometer across the street said ninety-four, and he chose to believe the lower number. Through the windshield, he could see the storage facility office, a converted trailer with a window unit dripping condensation onto dead grass.
He knew that Corolla. Fifteen years old, maybe sixteen, with the same dent in the rear quarter panel. Elijah had backed into a mailbox the day they'd buried Dad. Marcus remembered standing in the driveway, watching his brother try to hammer it out with the heel of his shoe.
The auctioneer was a woman in her fifties wearing a Journey t-shirt and cargo shorts. She had a voice that could cut through construction noise. Marcus had worked with her husband on a job site once, running conduit for a strip mall that never got finished.
"Folks, we're starting in five minutes," she called out. "Cash only, everything must go today."
There were maybe twenty people gathered, the usual crowd. Dealers mostly, looking for electronics or tools they could flip. A young couple who probably watched those reality shows about storage auctions. Two older women who'd arrived together in a van, professionals by the look of them.
Elijah stood apart from everyone, holding a clipboard and a calculator. Still the professor, even here. Still needing to figure everything out with numbers.
Marcus walked over. Not to talk, just to stand near enough that they'd be understood as together. Elijah glanced at him, then back at his clipboard.
"She paid through July," Elijah said. "The invoice says she paid through July."
"It's August."
"I know it's August."
The auctioneer led them down a row of orange doors. The concrete held last night's heat, radiating it back up through their shoes. She stopped at unit 47.
"Dolores Reyes," she announced, reading from her own clipboard. "Ten by twelve unit. Rent's three months behind. We open it, you look for two minutes, then we start bidding."
She cut the lock with bolt cutters. The door rolled up with a sound like thunder.
Their mother had packed it to the ceiling. Boxes stacked on boxes, black garbage bags stuffed into gaps, furniture turned sideways to fit. A dresser they recognized from their childhood bedroom. Their father's recliner, duct tape on the arms where the fabric had split. A sewing machine in its case. Christmas decorations spilling from a torn box.
"Jesus," somebody said.
"Two minutes," the auctioneer said.
People pressed forward, using their phones as flashlights. Marcus saw one of the older women pull out a single plate from a box near the front, examine the bottom, put it back. The young couple whispered to each other, the man shaking his head.
Elijah had stopped writing on his clipboard. He stood there with his mouth slightly open, the way he used to look when Mom would yell at them for tracking mud through the house.
"Alright, let's start the bidding at fifty dollars."
"Fifty," one of the older women said.
"Seventy-five," said someone Marcus couldn't see.
"One hundred," Elijah said, his voice cracking slightly.
"One fifty."
"Two hundred," Marcus said.
The bidding went quickly. The dealers could smell desperation, and desperation meant you'd go higher than you should. Marcus had three hundred dollars in his wallet, money he'd pulled from the ATM for gas and food. Elijah probably had less.
"Three fifty," one of the older women said.
"Four hundred," Elijah said.
Marcus looked at him. Elijah didn't have four hundred dollars. Not unless something had changed dramatically in his life.
"Four fifty," the woman said, sounding bored now.
"Five hundred," Marcus said.
"Five fifty."
They were going to lose it. Everything their mother had saved, had paid to keep month after month while she worked at the dollar store, while she clipped coupons and bought generic brand everything. It would go to these women who'd sort through it with latex gloves, price it for their antique booth, throw away what wouldn't sell.
"Six hundred," Elijah said.
"Six fifty," Marcus said immediately, not looking at his brother.
The older woman considered, then shook her head. "It's yours."
The auctioneer moved on to the next unit. The crowd followed, leaving the brothers standing in front of unit 47.
"I don't have six hundred dollars," Elijah said.
"I know."
"I don't have three hundred dollars."
"I know that too."
They stood there looking at the wall of their mother's things. Somewhere in there was the kitchen table where they'd eaten ten thousand meals. The good dishes she'd used twice a year. The shoebox of photographs she'd always meant to put in albums.
"I've got three hundred," Marcus said. "Maybe three twenty."
"I've got one eighty. One ninety if I don't eat for a week."
"That's four ninety."
"It's five ten, actually. And we need six fifty."
Marcus pulled out his phone. The credit card app took forever to load. Available credit: $240.
"I can get the rest on credit," he said.
"The lady said cash only."
"There's an ATM at the Circle K."
They drove separately, Marcus following Elijah's Corolla down the access road. The ATM charged a four-dollar fee. The cash advance would cost him another twenty-five dollars plus interest. He'd be paying it off for months.
When they got back, the auction had moved three units down. Marcus paid the woman in the Journey shirt, counting out bills that felt damp from his pocket. She gave him a receipt and a new lock.
"You got twenty-four hours to clear it out," she said. "After that, it's twenty dollars a day."
The brothers stood in front of the unit. Neither moved to start loading.
"Remember this?" Elijah pulled out a ceramic lamp shaped like a cowboy boot. The shade was water-stained and torn.
"Dad bought that at a yard sale," Marcus said. "Mom hated it."
"She kept it though."
They worked without system, pulling things out and setting them on the concrete. Box after box of papers - tax returns, medical bills, report cards, warranties for appliances long since broken. A bag of fabric scraps from her sewing days. Christmas ornaments they'd made in elementary school, popsicle sticks and glitter and cotton balls.
Three hours in, the heat was unbearable. They'd filled Marcus's truck bed twice, driven the loads to Elijah's apartment where they stacked everything in the living room. Elijah's place was barely bigger than the storage unit, a one-bedroom in a complex that had seen better days.
"You want some water?" Elijah asked.
They sat on the steps outside, passing a bottle back and forth. A neighbor's kid rode by on a bicycle with a broken chain, pushing himself along with his feet.
"When's the last time you talked to her?" Marcus asked.
"Two weeks ago. Maybe three. You?"
"Month."
"She never mentioned the storage unit."
"She never mentioned a lot of things."
They drove back to finish. The sun was directly overhead now, the storage facility like an oven. In the back corner of the unit, under a stack of winter coats they'd never needed in Arizona, Elijah found a banker's box sealed with packing tape.
"This has our names on it," he said.
Marcus looked. In their mother's careful handwriting: "For Marcus and Elijah."
They sat on the truck's tailgate to open it. Inside were letters, dozens of them, in envelopes addressed but never stamped. Some to Marcus, some to Elijah. The earliest was dated eight years ago, a week after their father's funeral.
Elijah opened one addressed to him:
"Mijo, I know you're hurting. I know you think Marcus should have done things different with Dad. But Marcus is hurting too. He just shows it different. Like your father did. I should tell you this but I don't know how to start that conversation. So I'm writing it down. Maybe someday I'll find the courage to mail this. Love, Mom."
Marcus read one of his:
"Marcus, Elijah called today but didn't mention you. I didn't mention you either. This is how it goes now, I guess. Both my boys acting like the other doesn't exist. Your father would be so disappointed. Not in you. In me, for letting it happen. I keep thinking I'll fix it but I don't know how. You're so much like him, keeping everything inside until it turns to stone. Love, Mom."
They read in silence, passing letters back and forth. Their mother had written about her days at the dollar store, about the customers who couldn't afford shampoo, about finding their father's reading glasses and not being able to throw them away. She wrote about her own father, who'd died when she was twelve. About wanting to take a vacation but not knowing where to go alone.
"She was lonely," Elijah said.
"Yeah."
The last letter was dated a week ago:
"My boys, I'm writing this in case something happens. The storage unit is paid through July but I don't know if I can keep paying. Everything's getting more expensive. If you're reading this, it means you found each other there. That was my plan, anyway. Not much of a plan, but it's what I could think of. There's nothing valuable in there, just our life. But maybe that's valuable enough. I love you both. Take care of each other. Mom."
Marcus folded the letter carefully, put it back in its envelope.
"She planned this," Elijah said.
"Not the dying part."
"No. But the rest."
They loaded the last boxes as the sun started to drop toward the mountains. Marcus's truck was full again. They'd need to make another trip, maybe two.
"You hungry?" Marcus asked.
They went to a Denny's because it was close and had air conditioning. The hostess sat them at a booth with a ripped seat. Marcus ordered coffee and eggs. Elijah got a sandwich.
"I can't keep all that stuff," Elijah said. "I don't have room."
"Me neither."
"We could get our own unit."
"And pay every month to store it?"
"Mom did."
"Look how that turned out."
The food came. They ate slowly, neither wanting to go back outside.
"I was wrong," Elijah said suddenly. "About Dad. About the funeral. About all of it."
Marcus set down his coffee cup. "We did what we could afford."
"I know. I knew it then too. I just wanted someone to blame."
"Yeah, well. Get in line."
They sat quietly while the restaurant filled with the dinner crowd. Families mostly, kids coloring on their menus, parents looking tired.
"What do we do with it all?" Elijah asked.
"Keep what matters. Let the rest go."
"How do we know what matters?"
Marcus thought about it. "I guess we'll know when we see it."
They went back to Elijah's apartment. The living room was a maze of boxes and furniture. They started sorting - keep, donate, throw away. The lamp shaped like a cowboy boot went in the donate pile, then Marcus moved it to keep.
"Really?" Elijah said.
"Dad loved that stupid thing."
They found photo albums they'd never seen, pictures of their mother as a young woman, their father in his Army uniform, themselves as babies. A report card where Marcus had gotten his only A, in woodshop. Elijah's college diploma, which their mother had framed even though Elijah had never hung it up.
"Look at this," Elijah said.
It was a receipt from a pawn shop, dated three months ago. Their mother's wedding ring. Two hundred dollars.
"She needed money," Marcus said.
"For the storage unit."
"To keep all this stuff."
They looked around at the boxes, the furniture, the accumulated weight of a life.
"This is insane," Elijah said, and started laughing. Not happy laughter, but the kind that comes when things are too sad to cry about.
Marcus started laughing too. They sat on the floor of Elijah's apartment, surrounded by their inheritance, laughing until they couldn't breathe.
When they finally stopped, Elijah said, "We should have a yard sale."
"Nobody has yard sales anymore."
"Mom did. Every Saturday, touring the neighborhood, looking for treasures."
"Treasures," Marcus repeated.
They worked until midnight, organizing and deciding. In the end, they each kept a few boxes. The photo albums, some of their father's tools, their mother's sewing machine even though neither of them sewed. The letters, of course. The lamp.
The next morning, they loaded everything else back into Marcus's truck and drove it to Goodwill. The donation attendant gave them a receipt for taxes neither of them would probably use.
They stood in the parking lot afterward, not sure what came next.
"You want to get breakfast?" Marcus asked.
"I've got to get back. I'm teaching a summer class."
"What about the unit?"
"It's empty. We just need to tell them we're done with it."
They drove back to the storage facility. The woman in the Journey shirt was in the office, same clothes as yesterday or maybe she had multiple Journey shirts.
"All cleared out?" she asked.
"Yeah," Marcus said.
She handed him a form to sign, releasing them from any further obligation.
Outside, the brothers stood by their vehicles. The heat was already building, another hundred-degree day coming.
"Thanks," Elijah said. "For the money. I'll pay you back."
"Don't worry about it."
"No, I will. Half of six fifty is three twenty-five. Minus my one ninety is one thirty-five. I'll send you a check."
"Elijah."
"What?"
"Don't send me a check."
Elijah nodded. He got in his Corolla, started the engine. The air conditioning wheezed but didn't blow cold. He rolled down the window.
"You want to come for dinner sometime?" he asked. "I can't cook for shit, but there's a good taco place nearby."
"Yeah, okay."
"Next week?"
"Sure."
Marcus watched him drive away, then sat in his own truck for a minute. He pulled out one of the letters, one addressed to both of them that they'd found at the bottom of the box:
"Marcus and Elijah, My two boys. So different but so much the same. Both of you trying so hard to be good men in a world that doesn't make it easy. I wish I could have given you more. More money, more opportunities, more everything. But all I had to give was love, and I'm not even sure I did that right. The storage unit - I know it's silly. But it felt important to keep these things, evidence that we existed, that we were a family once. Still are, even broken apart. Don't let my things become a burden. Keep what helps you remember the good times. Let go of the rest. Let go of the anger too, if you can. Love, Mom."
Marcus folded the letter, put it in his glove compartment. He drove home through the desert heat, thinking about what to keep and what to let go. The lamp sat on the seat beside him, wrapped in newspaper. It was ugly as sin, but his father had loved it, and his mother had kept it, and now it was his.
When he got home, he put it on the end table and turned it on. The bulb still worked, throwing strange shadows from the torn shade. He sat in his recliner - not his father's, but similar enough - and looked at it.
His phone buzzed. A text from Elijah: "Found another box in my closet. Mom's recipes. Want copies?"
Marcus typed back: "Yeah."
Then, after a moment, he added: "Maybe you could show me how to make her enchiladas."
"I don't know how to make them either."
"We'll figure it out."
Three dots appeared, showing Elijah was typing. They disappeared, appeared again. Finally: "OK. Sunday?"
"Sunday's good."
Marcus set down his phone. Outside, the sun was setting, the sky turning purple and orange. Monsoon season was coming, the weather man said, though it came later every year, and sometimes not at all. But the clouds were building over the mountains, and the air smelled like rain might be possible.
He thought about his mother, working her shifts at the dollar store, coming home tired, making dinner anyway. Writing those letters at this same time of day probably, when the light was soft and the heat was breaking. Paying that storage bill month after month, seventy-five dollars she couldn't afford, keeping their history safe for a reunion she'd never see.
The lamp flickered, the old bulb probably ready to give out. He'd need to get a new one. LED, probably, something that would last. Though there was something to be said for the old ones, the way they warmed up slowly, the particular quality of their light.
His phone buzzed again. Elijah: "Also found Dad's high school yearbook. He had a mullet."
Marcus smiled, typed: "Bring it Sunday."
He looked around his apartment. Sparse, functional, nothing on the walls. Maybe he'd hang some of those photos. Maybe he'd get frames first, do it right. Or maybe he'd just tape them up like Mom used to do, covering the refrigerator with moments she wanted to remember.
The lamp flickered again but didn't go out. He left it on, the cowboy boot casting its weird shadow on the wall, and went to the kitchen to see what he had for dinner. Not much. Some eggs, some tortillas that might be past their date. He could make something from that. His mother always could.
He thought about calling Elijah back, asking if he wanted to come tonight instead of Sunday. But it was too soon for that. They needed time to let this settle, this new version of themselves as brothers who talked, who had dinner, who figured things out together.
Instead, he started cooking, scrambling the eggs with some cheese he found in the back of the fridge. The tortillas were fine, just a little stiff. He ate standing at the counter, looking out the window at the darkening sky. The clouds were definitely building. Maybe rain, maybe not. But the possibility was there.
When he finished eating, he washed the dishes immediately, the way his mother had taught him. Don't let them pile up, she'd said. It's harder when you let them pile up.
He went back to the living room, sat in his chair. The lamp was still on, still flickering occasionally but hanging in there. Like everything else in this heat, making do, lasting longer than anyone had a right to expect.
He pulled out his phone, scrolled to Elijah's number. Not to call, just to see it there. To know it was possible. Then he scrolled to their mother's number. He hadn't been able to delete it yet. Maybe he never would. Maybe that was okay too.
The first drops of rain hit the window, surprising and sudden. Not enough to matter, not enough to break the drought or lower the temperature more than a degree or two. But enough to streak the glass, to make the air smell like wet concrete and creosote.
Marcus stood, walked to the window. The rain was already stopping, just a brief tease of what might come later. But it was something. A break in the pattern. A small gift on a hard day.
He thought about his mother, writing those letters year after year. Paying for that storage unit even when she couldn't afford it. Keeping faith that someday her boys would find their way back to each other, even if she wasn't there to see it.
"We found it, Mom," he said to the empty room. "Took us long enough, but we found it."
The lamp flickered one more time, then steadied, throwing its light against the coming dark.