Martha had packed all of her things in cardboard boxes. They lined the hallways stacked like a miniature industrial park, layered with clothes and shoes, trinkets and jewelry that had no value to the pawn shop.

She went out to the back porch, mostly out of habit, carrying her drink and a telephone. Once there she didn’t quite know what to do. The chairs and tables had been removed, and so it was only a wooden deck now and a view of the ocean that broke her heart now that she had nowhere to sit. She looked at the phone in her hands. She had thought about calling her sister.

When the movers arrived to take the last of her things, she peered through the glass of the front door at two short and burly men who stood there, watching her.

The men looked at each other. She held her glass between her two fingers and rattled the ice. She thought about not opening it. “No one is home,” she said, through the door. “Go away.” The men smiled.

She finally let them in. She couldn’t change things now. She let them in and she let them have at it. They carried boxes, two at a time, out to the truck, scuffing their tan work boots across the wooden floors. They weren’t her floors anymore. She sat on the stairs with her drink and the melting ice floating around the top.

She had nothing left to do. She was an old woman now and her sons were busy failing their way through life. One venture at a time. Thomas had called her last week to tell her he was going to become a movie producer. “There’s nothing left,” she told him, and this only angered him.

“What do you mean there is nothing left?”

“What does it sound like I mean?”

“But I don’t understand,” he said.

“You wouldn’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing left.” She didn’t harbor any hope for him. He was too dumb. She didn’t even want to know where he had gotten the idea. A producer. The trouble with people today, she thought, they think they can be anyone they want. He called her a greedy old liar, and hung up the phone.

When the boxes were all packed, the movers came to her on the stairs. They wanted a tip. She saw it in their lingering, in the way they told her the obvious. “We’re all finished,” one said, like she didn’t know. The other stood like a thug close behind. She felt the chill she felt sometimes when she passed a group of men on the street.

“I’m sorry,” she said. All of her things were gone. Everything was gone. The only thing left of her inside of the house was her, and her memories. And neither would last very much longer.