Well, in little pea-museum circles, at any rate. And she was in charge of getting the new building and organizing the move. Which is why I dragged you in, Jane."

“We're moving things next week? But, Shelley, there's nowhere to move to. The ground-breaking for the new building is tomorrow. Or it was supposed to be."

“Jane, the museum's been in the same building since 1907. The basement alone is stacked with ninety years' worth of — stuff. People give their old junk to museums and it piles up. It all has to be cataloged and evaluated and packed up for the move when the building is ready. It's months and months of work. I imagine half of the stuff, at least, will just be pitched. Or given to some even more downtrodden museum."

“But, Shelley, I'm antiques-impaired. I don't know valuable from dreck. And you're not much brighter than I am about it."

“We don't have to make decisions. Just write down what we can recognize, store it in boxes with labels, and leave everything else for the experts."

“You're saying we're the bottom of the food chain, aren't you? The poor slobs who dust things off and sweep up the mouse droppings?"

“Just about. But it's the necessary first step."

“And we start that on Monday? How long is our sentence?"

“I only volunteered you for next week," Shelley said. "I knew you'd be busy the week after that, getting Mike off to college.”

Jane almost offered the comment that her son Mike was doing quite nicely at preparing himself for college, but feared that might get her condemned to yet another week in a dusty, musty basement. For the past two weeks he'd been taking his own inventory of possessions, passing down many of his treasures to his soon to-be-seventh-grade brother, Todd, and high schooler-sister, Katie. To give them credit, they received his offerings with a polite pretense of gratitude. Mike had also generated a mountain of trash. His bedroom was eerily tidy now, with most of his belongings stored in cartons in the garage, ready to be put in the back of his brand-new, graduation-gift pickup truck and Jane's wheezing old station wagon when moving day arrived.