The Thrift Store Thaumaturge

Maggie Sullivan has four things planned for Tuesday. Open at seven. Sort the donations. Buy a book. Mail a package.

She manages the first one.

By eleven a van pulls up outside Second Chances with an estate lot nobody can account for — six boxes from a house she has never heard of, stripped to the bare walls, cleared by a crew who wouldn’t go past the front hall. Somebody has quietly paid the taxes on it since 1994. Where the donor’s name should be, the paperwork carries one typed line.

The name of the woman Maggie buried when she was nineteen.

Her grandmother’s name.

Inside the smallest box is a silver ring that isn’t quite silver. Outside is a town that has been keeping something from her since the day she was born.

Maggie is forty-six years old. She has spent three years assuming the interesting part of her life is behind her.

She is about to be extremely wrong about that.