Bryson lugged the trash to the curb.  Large dense bags and several boxes filled with old cosmetics,  odd trinkets, broken dishes, and useless electronic gadgets were stacked against the stone wall of the cottage.

Sometimes to occupy his mind while loading a departing tenant's debris, Bryson imaged Isabelle before she left one night taking the evergreen Zebrina and his copy of Silver Bird.   One frequent recall was Isa with her long black braid at nineteen.

 Bryson remembered the eve they'd filled the bathtub while drinking Guiness Stout.  Isa was ripe then, thin, and the roses were still red in bloom across her lips.  While she reclined gently in the tub he pulled the milk stool where she often perched painting her toenails blue, closer to her soaking.  He fed her a morsel of  huckleberry brie.  As she nibbled, he lifted his Marine Band from a potter's indigo cup and began to play for her in the minor key of B.  Isa's braid lay thick and dark and fell diagonally between her splendid breasts.

At the curb, Bryson detected the contents of one unintentional discard.  Or was it?  Inside the box were signed handmade ornaments, the primary kind some mother replenished annually with the newest creations of her small children.  One filigree snowflake with an elementary Lilleth printed neatly on the back.  Ben's  young hand mounted on a shiny tin-foiled heart.  Penny's mosaic sleigh, stacked with glued buttons bow-tied with gold string.  

Bryson wondered why this tenant had these ornaments.  Why not the mother?  In the bottom of the box in the neatly scrawled lines of a simple card he found an answer:  Penny, if you can't come home, we'll come to you in heart.   Merry Christmas.  Love, Mom. 

   After moving the box inexplicably to the front seat of his truck, Bryson made the necessary return  to clear the wall.  He imagined Isa sitting on the granite of a Pisgah rock.  Did they make love there as she later claimed, or had they merely slept under the stars?  

As he slung the last bag forward, a small boy on a bike approached his truck.  

Hey Mister, Are you taking Penny's things?  Penny was gonna give me the trains in her room.  She promised.  Penny's mom said she would leave them on the porch once she finished.  Have you cleared the porch?  She told me  Penny would have wanted me to have them.

Bryson peered as the boy made sounds.  He pointed to the porch where the corner of one remaining box was visible through the rails.  As he walked from the wall, the words of the song Bryson had played for Isa wafted aimlessly out of mind without the accompanying lonesome horn of remorse,