Broken Things

By Lori B. Duff

"Duff's elegant prose brings Tracie's inner world to life....[T]hose suffering from persistent grief will likely see a bit of themselves in Tracie." - Kirkus Reviews

We're all a little bit broken, aren't we?

 

Young widow Tracie Shaw may be more than most.  She spends her days hidden away making beautiful treasures out of other people's trash.

 

When she finds someone's abandoned ashes in a storage bin auction, her life begins to change.  When she meets a woman who might have a clue as to where the ashes came from and what they mean, her life turns upside down.

 

In this tale of friendship and loss, magical realism takes a backseat to the every day magic in BROKEN THINGS.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lori B. Duff, P.C.
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223637448

Lori B. Duff

Lori B. Duff is the two-time winner of the Georgia Bar Journal's annual fiction competition and has won the Foreword Indies Gold Medal for humor.  She serves as the 2022-2024 President of the National Society for Newspaper Columnists and is a Past President of the Georgia Council for Municipal Court Judges.  She's married and has two adult children who will always be her babies.  In her spare time, she practices law in Loganville, Georgia.

Book preview

Chapter One

The auctioneer clipped the lock and rolled up the metal door on a new bin, scattering cobwebs and dark brown insects. He shined a flashlight inside and poked around with a long stick he kept for that purpose. Bin C-38, he said, Looks like plastic containers with papers, maybe some other boxes and bags?  It’s a mystery bin!  Will there be a signed copy of the Declaration of Independence?  Abraham Lincoln’s signature?  A menu from the Titanic?  A first edition of Tom Sawyer?  Who will take a chance on this mystery?

It looked like a bunch of junk. Probably just old bank statements. At best the kindergarten homework from someone now in their forties. There didn’t even seem to be an old end table Tracie could resurrect by refinishing or covering with bits of glass in a fun mosaic. The small crowd looked at the ground, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, lest it be interpreted as a bid.

Tracie’s heart lurched. Whatever this unwanted detritus was, at some point, someone had thought enough of it to box it, convey it here, and pay for its storage. In a moment of over-empathy, Tracie transported to the hot asphalt of the kickball field thirty years ago, waiting for someone to pick her for their team, knowing it would only happen when there were no other options.

Tracie was hoping for old postcards and letters, maybe some photographs of forgotten people she could use in arts and crafts projects. She liked to do this – to bring old faces no one looked at anymore out into the open, to force people to see them once again through the power of art. Well, crafts. Who was she kidding?

Anyone?  The auctioneer called. I’ll lower the minimum to twenty-five dollars.

Twenty-five dollars, Tracie shouted, her hand shooting up in the air.

Twenty-five dollars from the lovely lady in the purple shirt. Do I hear thirty?  You’ll all kick yourselves when she discovers holy treasure inside! Twenty-five, do I hear thirty, twenty-five, do I hear thirty, twenty-five going once, twice, SOLD for twenty-five dollars.

In her brain, Tracie knew she’d bought a small warehouse full of trash. In her heart, Tracie felt like she’d rescued a kitten.

***

She only had a few hours to empty out the storage bin. Whatever she couldn’t get out in time, she forfeited. She used a dolly she’d brought to haul everything into the bed of her ancient Silverado truck. As she heaved the boxes into the bed, she glanced inside them, seeing nothing of much interest. The more tired her back got (lift with your legs, she kept telling herself) and the less interesting a superficial glance at her purchase got, the more disappointed she became. She peered into the recesses of the bin. There were only about a half dozen more boxes. She considered leaving them, but she had too much empathy for these inert objects to do so. Brushing aside dust and spiders, she dutifully loaded them into the truck, then headed home.

Once home, the thought of reversing the process and bringing this mess inside made her wonder why she’d attempted this folly in the first place. She pulled a blue tarp out of the garage, threw it over the bed in case of rain or curious critters, and went inside to sleep.

The next morning, after a breakfast of coffee and wheat toast, Tracie went outside to see what her treasure looked like in the daylight. Her legs and back ached from the effort of lifting all those boxes, but some of the excitement of the unknown had returned. The tarp was covered in dew; she was glad she’d thought of it. Some of the cardboard boxes and paper bags would have soaked through. There was a pervasive mildewy smell.

She pulled off the tarp, spraying herself with dirty water in the process, and stepped up into the bed to start poking around. She sat on one particularly sturdy looking box and lifted the cover off one next to her. It contained file folders, labeled things like grocery receipts and gas receipts. Many of the receipts therein, printed on thermal paper, had faded beyond reading. Other than seeing gas at 79 cents a gallon and a loaf of bread for 51 cents, they weren’t particularly interesting, even when they could be read. Who would keep these mundane receipts?  And who would pay to store them in boxes?  It looked like someone had cleaned out the house of someone they didn’t care about, unloading armloads of whatever had been left behind in boxes and stored until they had the time, energy, or desire to deal with it.

She opened another box. This one contained a jumble of collectible spoons from different tourist locations. None of them were tarnished, which meant none of them were silver: likely none of them had much value. Still, these she could use for her projects.

Another box contained mid-century appliances. A blender. A food processor. A space-age looking toaster, complete with decades-old crumbs. These might or might not work, but if they did, someone would want them. Mid-century was making a comeback.

The only other box she could reach from her perch was a box full of boxes. The smaller boxes obviously didn’t go together. Some were cardboard, some were plastic, some wood. She pulled out a plastic one that sat on top. The top took some working to get off, and when it did, the bottom nearly pulled out of her hands. She steadied it and gazed inside. There was a pretty wooden box with inlaid stars worked in lighter wood on the corners. She lifted it out. The box itself was a work of art and might fetch her the price she’d paid for the bin. If she didn’t decide to keep it, that was.

The lid of the wooden box was rounded and screwed on. She tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. The more she tried, and the more it failed to yield, the more she was convinced there was treasure inside. She shook it: nothing rattled. Something slid around – sand?  She set it aside to bring in the house.

There wasn’t much else of interest in the top layer of boxes in the back of her truck. Some cheap costume jewelry. She could take most of it apart and repurpose the beads and clasps. A pile of lacy handkerchiefs stained and torn with age. Some photographs in an album that were half eaten by rot and mildew. The forgotten faces in them made her too sad to keep looking. Her eyes began to itch from the swirling dust and spores coming off her purchase in waves.

She took the wooden box and went inside the house to wash her face. She carefully dried it, then took out some Q-tips and mineral oil from a cabinet. She went to the dining room table, a table which had never seen a meal served on it, and made space among the half-finished craft projects to work on the box.

She cleaned the box as best she could, trying to get the cotton swab soaked in oil underneath the lip of the lid. When she’d finished, she wiped it down with a soft cloth and tried to open the box. The lid spun freely under her hand.

At first, she thought it was filled with grey dust. When she shined the light from her cell phone inside, however, she saw that the substance was coarser than sand, and had some larger bits in it. She reached her hand in to examine one of the larger bits, and as soon as she