The text comes at 7:14 AM on a Thursday: "Can you come Saturday? Morning. Garage."

No punctuation flourishes. No explanation. No emoji, which—to be fair—Dad has never used an emoji in his life and probably thinks they're a symptom of societal decline.

I spend the next forty-eight hours constructing elaborate disaster scenarios.

The garage is on fire. Someone is dying. Mom found out about the time I watched an R-rated movie at Jennifer's and this is the intervention. Dad's selling the house. Dad's leaving. Dad has a secret second family and the garage is where he keeps them—

"You're spiraling," Jennifer says over the phone Friday night.

"I'm not spiraling. I'm preparing."

"For what? A garage-based apocalypse?"

"You don't know my family."

"Rena." She sighs. "Maybe he just needs help moving something heavy."

She's probably right. She's usually right about the things I'm catastrophizing about.[^1]

The drive is twenty minutes. I make it in eighteen because I hit every green light, which feels like either divine favor or a sign that the universe wants me to arrive at my doom slightly ahead of schedule.

Dad's in the garage when I pull up. Alone. The door is open, spring light spilling across concrete, and he's standing in the middle of what looks like a cardboard archaeology dig.

Boxes. Everywhere.

Old ones. The kind that have been taped shut so long the tape has yellowed and curled at the edges.

"Hey," I say, hovering at the entrance like I need permission to enter my childhood garage.

"Hey." Dad gestures vaguely at the chaos. "Your mother's at Aunt Ruth's for the day. Thought we could sort through some of this."

"Some of... what?"

He picks up a box, and I see the handwriting on the side. Faded black marker, familiar loops and slants.

Mama's things — kitchen

Grandma.

These are Grandma's boxes. Stored for fifteen years, since the funeral where I stood in a too-stiff dress and didn't know how to cry correctly, since the heart attack that took her while I was still learning who she was.

"Oh," I say.

"Church is doing a donation drive." Dad sets the box down. "Figured it was time. Thought you might want to take what you want before—" He stops. Clears his throat. "Before it goes."

I step into the garage.

Dad made coffee before I arrived. It's in a thermos, the old green one from camping trips I barely remember. He pours me a cup without asking.

It's over-extracted. Slightly burnt. The kind of coffee that exists purely to deliver caffeine without pretense of enjoyment.

I drink the whole cup anyway.

We work in silence at first. Dad opens boxes, sorts methodically. I hover, uncertain what I'm allowed to touch, what counts as claiming and what counts as intruding.

Then I reach into a box labeled Mama's things — misc and my sleeve catches on something.

Photographs. Everywhere.

They cascade across the concrete like a paper waterfall—black and white, color, Polaroids with faded edges. Decades of moments I never knew existed.

"Sorry—I'm sorry—" I'm already on my knees, gathering.

Dad doesn't comment. He kneels beside me, picks up a photograph, and goes still.

"That's her at your age."

He hands it to me.

The woman in the photo has dark curly hair—wilder than mine, barely contained. Green eyes. An oval face. She's standing in front of a house I don't recognize, wearing an apron, laughing at whoever's holding the camera.

She looks like me.

Or I look like her. I don't know which direction inheritance runs.

"I didn't know," I say. My voice sounds strange.

"She was something." Dad takes the photo back, studies it. "Talked too much when she was nervous. Asked questions nobody else thought to ask. Made the worst coffee you ever tasted, but she made it every morning anyway."[^2]

I laugh. It comes out wet.

"She would've loved your shop," he says. Still looking at the photo. "Would've sat at that counter of yours and asked you a hundred questions about beans. Would've driven you crazy."

"I would've let her."

Dad nods. Sets the photo aside carefully. Keeps sorting.

We find the Bible at the bottom of a box labeled Mama's things — important.

It's worn. The leather cover is cracked, the pages soft from use. When I open it, there's handwriting everywhere—margins filled with notes, verses underlined, dates marking when certain passages mattered.

Romans 8:1 — March 3, 1987 — finally understand

I stop breathing.

"She loved that verse," Dad says. He's watching me. "Said it was the one that set her free."

Grandma. My grandmother. The woman who made terrible coffee and asked too many questions. She found Romans 8:1 thirty-seven years before I did. She wrote finally understand in the margin like it was a revelation.

Like it changed everything.

It did. It does.

"Can I—" I have to stop. Start again. "Can I take this?"

"That's why I called you here." Dad's voice is quiet. "She would've wanted you to have it."

I hold the Bible against my chest. Grandma's handwriting. Grandma's verses. Grandma's freedom, passed down through boxes in a garage to a granddaughter who found the same words and didn't know she was walking a path already cleared.

I leave with the Bible, the photograph, and a tin of recipes I'll probably never make but can't bear to let go.

Dad walks me to my car. We stand there, awkward, the way Champions do when emotions get too close to the surface.

"Thanks," I say. "For calling. For—this."

He nods. Looks at the house, the garage, anywhere but directly at me.

"She'd be proud of you." He says it fast, like he's afraid he'll lose the nerve. "Just so you know."

I don't cry. I don't.[^3]

"Same time next year?" I try to make it a joke. It doesn't quite land.

Dad almost smiles. "Drive safe, Rena LeeAnn."

I do. The whole way home, Grandma's Bible on the passenger seat, her face in a photograph tucked into its pages, her verse already living in my bones.

I just didn't know I inherited it.

[^1]: Catastrophizing is a spiritual gift. I'm very gifted.

[^2]: The coffee thing might be genetic. Although mine is good and chaotic, not bad and consistent. Progress.

[^3]: I cried. The whole drive home. Grandma's verse playing on repeat in my head: finally understand.