Storage Unit
by Emily Grandy

It was a damp day in December and Roger’s mother had been dead six weeks when a call came in from an unfamiliar assortment of digits. He’d been turning into the empty parking lot of the shopping strip, thinking about buying salt for the walks, when his phone rang. Normally, he would reject any unknown number outright, but the 440-area code—one he knew well, that of his boyhood, and of his recently deceased mother—gave him pause. It was less curiosity than suspicion that prompted Roger to answer the unexpected summons.