The Inventory

The inventory divided their mother's belongings into categories: furniture, jewellery, books and miscellaneous effects. Under the last heading, the valuer had entered a cracked ceramic bowl at a price so low that Daniel wondered why it had been recorded at all.

His sister, Elise, asked for the bowl before either of them mentioned the jewellery.

Daniel said yes, then immediately regretted it. He remembered the bowl on the kitchen counter, filled with keys, buttons and folded shopping lists. When he thought of returning home from school, it was often the first object he saw.

Elise remembered it differently. During their mother's final illness, she had used it to carry small things between the bedroom and the kitchen. To her, the bowl belonged to months Daniel had mostly experienced through telephone calls.

Their argument was polite, which made it no less exhausting. Each offered practical reasons for wanting an object that neither would have bought in a shop. Eventually Daniel said what he had been avoiding: he was afraid that Elise possessed more of their mother because she had been there more often.

Elise put the bowl back on the counter. "I don't want those months to be the price I pay for keeping it," she said.

They left it undecided that afternoon. Later, Daniel took a photograph of the kitchen before the furniture was removed. Elise took the bowl.

The arrangement did not balance an account. There was no account they could agree how to measure. It simply allowed them to stop treating the bowl as if it could settle one.