The estate had to be cleared by the end of the month, so the brothers met on a Tuesday, in the garage, in the heat.
Their father had kept his tools on a wall of pegboard, each in its own black outline, which was the only tidy thing about him. The good tools went first and without argument: the mitre saw, the drill press, the chisels in their canvas roll. Then the small things. Then it was just the two of them standing in front of a hammer.
It was nothing, that hammer. Fiberglass handle, rubber grip worn pale where a thumb had rested, four dollars new.
"I'll take it," said Nick.
"You don't want that," said Paul. "You want the saw."
"I have the saw."
Paul looked at the wall. The hammer's outline stood empty among the others like a tooth pulled from a healthy mouth, and he understood that Nick had come for this and nothing else, and had let him take the drill and the chisels so the trade would look fair.
"He used it to fix your bike," Paul said. "Fifty times, that summer."
"No," Nick said. "He used it to hang pictures. You weren't there."
You cannot argue with the person who was there. Paul gave him the hammer.
Driving home with a mitre saw he had no room for, he did the arithmetic. Their father died on a Thursday. The hook was empty when they walked in on Tuesday. Only two of them had a key, and Paul hadn't been in the house since the funeral.
He pulled onto the shoulder and sat there for a while.