Gerald was already sitting on the tailgate of his rusted Dodge when I pulled up to the gate of the house. He didn’t look like a man who had just inherited a house, mostly because he hadn’t.

The screen door of the back porch was hanging off its bottom hinge, rattling in the marsh wind every time a truck went by on Route 90. I didn’t say anything to him about the gate. I just killed the ignition and let the engine tick itself quiet while the humidity hit the windshield and fogged up the glass.

Everybody in the parish figured Arthur would leave his property to Gerald since Gerald had spent the last three summers pretending to help him paint the trim. They were wrong. Arthur left the title to me, and he left Gerald a cedar toolbox that smelled like ancient grease.

“You look like you’re hauling a load of bricks, Julian,” Gerald said, spitting a bit of tobacco juice into the dry weeds by the bumper.

“The roof leaks over the pantry,” I said, stepping out into the heat. “Arthur didn’t mention that in the paperwork.”

“Arthur didn’t mention a lot of things,” Gerald muttered, sliding off the tailgate with a dry thud of his boots against the gravel.

He stayed for twenty minutes, walking through the empty rooms with his hands shoved deep into his canvas pockets, kicking at the baseboards like he was looking for termites.

He left before I could find the broom. He told me he had to check a line on his boat down at the bayou, but his boat hasn’t left the trailer since the storm two years back.

I stayed until the sun dropped low enough to turn the bayou the color of a greasy copper kettle. Arthur’s kitchen was small, smelling faintly of dried chicory and old pine tallow. I spent three hours clearing out the pantry, throwing away jars of pickled okra that had gone dark in 2011 and stacking old feed sacks by the back door for the trash run on Thursday.

That was when I found the receipt. It was tucked behind the flour canister on the top shelf, held there by a bent paperclip that had rusted red against the newsprint.

It wasn’t a bank statement or a tax form. It was a yellow carbon slip from a place called Bayou Storage over on Highway 14. Unit 47. The monthly rate was eighty-nine dollars, and the issue date was stamped twelve years back.

I turned the slip over in my palm. The ink was faded to a pale plum color, but the numbers were clear enough. Arthur hadn’t driven a car since his hips went out in the fall of two thousand fourteen.

I found my truck keys on the counter where I’d left them next to a tin of mints. The engine turned over on the second crank, coughing a little blue smoke into the dusk before settling down to a steady idle.

The office at Bayou Storage was a double-wide trailer with gray aluminum siding that had started to peel near the corners. A yellow bug light hummed above the aluminum screen door, drawing a thick cloud of gnats that knocked against the plastic globe like small dry rain.

The manager was an older man with a gray crew cut and a stained gray cardigan that looked too heavy for the damp evening air. He was watching a small television set perched on a stack of phone books behind the counter, the glow flickering blue across his glasses.

“We close at seven,” he said without looking away from the screen.

I laid the yellow receipt on the Formica counter between us. The paper made a dry scratching sound against the scarred surface.

“I’m looking for Unit 47,” I said. “This belonged to my uncle, Arthur Vance.”

The manager finally turned his head, his eyes small and flat behind thick bifocals. He reached out with one stubby finger and tapped the yellow paper twice.

“Arthur hasn’t been out here since before the levee work,” he said. His voice was like two bricks rubbing together. “Your cousin Gerald has been the one coming by.”

The overhead light hummed a low, steady note that seemed to vibrate right behind my teeth.

“Gerald?” I said.

“Your cousin,” the manager repeated, reaching into a metal box under the desk and pulling out a duplicate key on a faded red plastic tag. “He came by two months ago to update the contact card. Said Arthur wasn’t up for the drive anymore. He has the second key.”