There were plenty of reasons to be annoyed, Katell thought. The smell of salt in the air was the most immediate, nagging one. She noticed the stink of it clinging to everything. Her clothes. The awful pasty yellow walls of her new bedroom. Her stepmom’s overweight rescue pug, Sebastian. Katell missed Montreal deeply, but she was afraid to express this to anyone in the house. They would smother her with insincere sympathy. So, she pretended she was above homesickness and focused her energy on the other things that annoyed her about Foirer, Nova Scotia.

Sorting through her dead grandmother’s things was taking longer than anyone anticipated. Katell hadn’t known Granny Durkee very well. After her parents split, Katell and her mum had only come by Nova Scotia once a year or so. In her memories, Granny Durkee was an oversized, wrinkly doll of a woman, always dressed in homemade gowns with lacy hemlines and Crocs covered with slugs. Granny Durkee spent a lot of time in the garden and, as a result, waged an ongoing war against the slugs. She would decapitate them with her thumbnail, and the look of triumph on her face during these executions was unmistakable. When Katell had arrived at her father’s house (which he had gleefully inherited from Granny Durkee), Katell saw Granny’s faded purple Crocs near the back stoop. They were covered in fat slugs.

For reasons unknown, Granny Durkee had stipulated in her will that she wanted Katell, her only granddaughter, to go through her “mementos” in the attic. Katell’s dad affectionately described his mother as a “keeper”. Katell’s mother called her ex-mother-in-law a “tacky hoarder”. Granny Durkee had been the poor wife of a truck driver for most of her life, with few hobbies other than gardening and talking shit on the phone to her friends about her famously-hated next-door neighbor, Greg Canning. No one—especially Katell—could imagine what was squirreled away in all those boxes in the attic.

On a rainy morning in the attic, Katell unpacked an entire box filled with cutlery. She found a box of homemade dresses and a tube of lipstick that had completely liquified. Her dad knocked on the attic door and entered with a tray.

“How’s it going, Kat?” He placed the tray—which contained a glass of milk, a sandwich with no crusts, and a small bowl of pretzels—on a chair. Katell eyed the offering, thinking that her dad was used to caring for her stepbrothers, who were all under the age of ten. Katell was seventeen, but no one here seemed willing to acknowledge her teenageness, instead either addressing her like a child, or a full-grown adult.

“Most of it’s going to Value Village,” Katell replied, brushing a pile of expired coupons aside. “It’s all junk.”

Her dad looked hurt by this. “You’ve got to pick out a few nice things, eh? Granny loved this stuff.”

“Well, you have her house. Isn’t that enough?”

The house was a sore spot for Katell. Up until Granny Durkee’s death last month, her dad and his new family had lived in a tiny duplex outside of Bridgewater. Katell’s mother, a flight attendant, had always lamented that if her ex-husband had more space, Katell could live with him for a year or two. Katell’s mother had been offered a full-time position in Melbourne, and she was desperate to take it. As luck would have it, Granny Durkee had a stroke while fixing her screen door and was dead by the time her hated neighbor called 911. The house went to Granny’s only son and his variety pack of shrieking sons, his much-younger wife, and her pug. All of them were supposedly delighted when Katell’s mother called to ask if Katell could move in with them for senior year.

Katell didn’t eat the sandwich. After her dad went downstairs again, she tugged on a box labelled IMPORTANT in black Sharpie. Everything was wrapped in white paper, which hinted at expensiveness. Katell was puzzled by every item in this box. There was a glass seagull, its beak chipped. A pair of wool baby socks. A few fancy Christmas tree ornaments. At the bottom of the box, Katell found a small cardboard box wrapped in newspaper (the date from the newspaper: 2001). Katell discovered that the little box was also taped shut quite aggressively. She sliced through the tape with her fingernail and pried it open. Inside was a porcelain gnome, nestled in cotton balls. He looked so peaceful in his little coffin that Katell felt guilty about having disturbed him. She wondered why this smiling, creepy gnome—barely the size of a bar of soap—would be so protected in this box.

She couldn’t even fathom what Granny Durkee—wife of truck driver, gardener, hater of slugs, and neighbor Greg Canning—could ever want a porcelain gnome for.  She worried that if she showed it to her dad, he would then let her awful stepbrothers play with it. The gnome would end up buried in the sandbox or scrawled on with the boys’ glitter pens. Katell understood that she had to keep the gnome a secret from her dad’s family. But it felt wrong to wrap the gnome back up in its cotton ball tomb and return it to an afterlife of secrecy.

Katell took her phone out of her pocket and called her mom. “I found a gnome.”

Her mom’s voice was hazy, clipped. Katell had no idea what time zone she was in. “Katell? Is it an emergency? Is everyone okay?”

“I found a gnome in Granny Durkee’s stuff.”

A rush of static. Katell’s mom sounded more annoyed than intrigued.
“What? Like, a garden gnome?”

“A little one in a box.”

“Katell, honey. Granny had lots of junk like that. Just throw it out.”

“It’s all wrapped up, though, like it’s valuable. What if I can sell it?”

An echoey intercom in the background announced a delayed flight to Taipei. “Well, you let me know if you find a diamond or a brick of gold, okay?” Katell’s mom was joking, obviously, but Katell could also hear resentment in her voice. What’s the point of this call? Isn’t your dad giving you enough attention?

“Okay,” said Katell. “Bye. Have fun in Taiwan.”

“I’m not going to—”
           
Katell ended the call and sat staring at the gnome. She could take a picture of it and put it on Reddit to get some amateur theories about its origins, or how much it was worth. But Reddit couldn’t really be trusted for honesty or accuracy, and besides, the demographic who would recognize something like this was well over the average age of Reddit users.  The gnome was a relic of Granny Durkee’s past. Only another person in her age group could identify the gnome’s value.
           
Katell had a surprising number of elderly people in her circle back in Montreal. She had worked after school at the front desk of a small community center near her house and knew most of the senior members by name. But she’d only been out in Foirer for a week. The only people she knew were his dad and his family, and none of them were elderly or trustworthy.
           
There was, of course, Greg Canning next door. Greg Canning the retired biology professor, who most certainly fit the elderly criteria. Greg Canning the neighbor that Granny Durkee had so devotedly hated for ten years. Granny Durkee would likely turn in her grave if she knew Katell was considering going to speak with Greg. But Katell didn’t believe very strongly in any sort of heaven system, or ghosts, or hauntings. And Granny Durkee couldn’t even turn in her grave if she wanted to—she’d been cremated.
           
Greg Canning opened his front door quickly, most likely because Katell had mashed the doorbell like an impatient trick-or-treater. Greg’s glasses were perched on his mostly bald head. He squinted at Katell as if he thought he should remember her, though they had never officially met. Then he smiled hesitantly. “Are you one of Jason’s kids?”
           
“Yeah,” Katell said.
           
“You look just like your grandmother.”
           
“Well, I’m adopted, so.”
           
This didn’t faze Greg Canning at all. “Same aura, then. A very lively energy.”
           
Katell blew out a breath of air to indicate that her time was precious. “Can I come in?”
           
He made her a cup of Earl Grey tea while she sat at his kitchen table. The window overlooked Granny Durkee’s garden and the ocean beyond in the distance. A magazine about marine life was open to an article about giant squids. Katell felt put off by the squids and closed the magazine, only to discover yet another image of a giant squid on the magazine cover.
           
Greg set a mug of tea in front of her, as well as a plate of store-bought cookies. Katell ate the cookies immediately. She was hungry after snubbing the lunch her dad had brought her in the attic.
           
“Now, forgive my memory,” said Greg, sitting down with his own mug of tea, “But it’s Catherine, correct?”
           
“Katell.”
           
“Right. I’m Greg.”
           
“I know who you are.”
           
“Your grandmother didn’t like me very much.”
           
“You built a fence.”
           
Greg nodded with no remorse. “Had I realized the scale of repercussions, I wouldn’t have built the fence.”
           
The story about Granny Durkee and Greg Canning boils down to Greg building a fence when he moved back in ten years ago (he’d lived in the city for fifty years before his retirement).  The fence in question was only about two feet tall. Tall enough to keep Greg’s two terriers (now long dead) out of Granny’s garden. But two feet or ten feet, it was a symbol of unfriendliness in Granny’s eyes, and she never forgave Greg Canning.
           
“I’m going through her stuff,” Katell told Greg.
           
“Oh, that’s always a tough process. I’m sorry for your loss.” He seemed to mean it.
           
“Have you ever seen her with this?” Katell pulled the gnome out of her backpack and placed it on the table. In the afternoon light, the gnome was sort of glorious. It wore an orange slouchy tipped hat and its cheeks were rosy. Its hands were clasped over its protruding belly.  
           
Greg raised his eyebrows. “Is that a gnome?”
           
“I guess so.”
           
“It belonged to your grandmother?”
           
“Apparently.”
           
“Charming little guy,” said Greg, gently inspecting the gnome.
           
“Do you know how much it’s worth?”
             
“I’m sorry. I don’t”
             
Katell slurped her tea. It tasted like dishwater, like all tea. “I want to know the story.”
           
“About the gnome?”
           
Katell nodded.
           
Greg placed the gnome back on the table. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about gnomes. But there’s a nice woman in town who runs an antique shop. Maybe you could go see her.”
           
“I don’t have a car.”
           
“Your dad couldn’t take you?”
           
Katell shrugged. “He’s busy with his kids.”
           
“Your stepbrothers?”
           
“His kids,” Katell repeated.
           
Greg fell silent. He looked at the squid on the magazine cover in front of him, then back to Katell. “Well, I suppose I could take you.”
           
Greg Canning drove a red minivan that was very clean on the inside. Buckling herself into the passenger seat, Katell asked why he needed a minivan if he lived alone.
           
“I coach hockey,” he answered, smiling.
           
Katell was shocked that he hadn’t mentioned this when he saw what she was wearing; a hot chocolate-stained Mile End Marauders jersey. “I play hockey,” she said.
           
“Ah. There’s a girls’ Under Eighteen team next town over. Perhaps you could join.”
           
“I played on the guys’ team. I was team captain this year.”
           
“Is that so?”
           
“They tried to kick me off, but my mom called the coach and yelled at him for being sexist. She said all sports teams should be co-ed for kids.”
           
“You must be good if you were team captain,” Greg said.
           
“I’m a fast skater.”
           
“The fastest?”
           
“On our team, yeah. And I score a lot of goals cause the other teams don’t take me seriously. Then I go right past them with the puck.”
           
Greg chuckled. “A good strategy.”
           
The antique store was right in the center of town, stuck between the library and the post office. It was a very narrow, crumbly-looking building. Greg parallel parked right in front of it. Katell climbed out of the passenger seat with the gnome cradled against her chest. She thought that it must’ve been quite thrilling for the gnome to get to leave the house and go on an adventure, after so many dark years of seclusion in the attic.
           
The store smelt very musty and old inside. Greg chatted with a lady with long white hair who stood behind the counter. Greg introduced her as Lorna. He introduced Katell by name, then added that she was Jason Durkee’s daughter. Lorna’s eyes lit up with recognition.
           
“You’re Sheila’s granddaughter?”
           
“Yeah,” said Katell.
           
“Sheila and I used to go hiking together, back when her ankles weren’t so bad.”
           
Katell couldn’t really imagine Granny Durkee anywhere other than her house or garden. “Do you know what this is?” She held out the gnome.
           
Lorna laughed when she saw it. Katell was surprised by the suddenness and volume of the laugh, that such a powerful sound could come from such a small woman.
           
“I was wondering when I’d find the tenth,” Lorna said, mysteriously. She gestured for them to follow her to the back of the store. There was a mirrored shelf of figurines. Among the crystal animals, the folk-art fisherman, the snowy Santas, there was a row of nine gnomes almost identical to the one Katell held in her hand. They all had different hat colours and expressions, and some had accessories like scarves and glasses and pipes. But it was obvious that Katell’s gnome fit in with this family.  
           
The price on the little card in front of the gnomes read: “30$ for the set”. Katell was quietly devastated by the low price. Her gnome wasn’t even worth five dollars on its own. Her mother was right: the gnome belonged in the garbage, along with the rest of Granny Durkee’s hoarded trinkets and mementos.
           
Greg Canning was frowning at the line of gnomes. At some point, he had moved his glasses from the top of his head onto his face. He looked like he was trying to solve an equation in his head.
           
“Ah,” said Lorna, noticing his expression. “They look familiar, don’t they?”
           
“They do,” Greg agreed. He touched the smallest gnome—a grey-bearded guy with a yellow hat and a bundle of daisies in his hands—and his frown deepened. “Where did you get them from?”
           
“Well, Megan Crowther sold them to me for five bucks. She said they freaked her kids out and she wanted to get rid of them. She’d inherited them from her aunt, Sharon Canning.” Lorna nodded at Greg. “Apparently they belonged to your mother.”
           
“I remember this one,” Greg said, pointing to the smallest gnome. “I used to play with it in the bathtub.”
           
“Ah, he’s my favorite,” said Lorna. “I always wondered where the tenth guy was. I know a guy in Hubbards who has the same set of gnomes in his shop—and he had ten. Nine always seemed like a strange number for a set, anyway. Where did you find this one?” She was asking Katell, who had been the one holding the gnome when they entered the store.
           
“In my grandmother’s attic,” Katell replied. She became suddenly uncomfortable at realizing that Granny Durkee must have stolen the gnome. There had been nine in Greg Canning’s family and only one in her box in the attic. Granny Durkee had grown up with Greg Canning, but Katell didn’t think her hatred for him stretched back that many decades.
           
Lorna smiled as if this was the answer she expected. “In the third grade, your grandmother was mad at Greg for pushing her on the playground. She said she was going to sneak into his house to steal his baseball cards. I guess she couldn’t find the cards,” she concluded, gesturing at the porcelain gnome with the orange hat.
             
Lorna gave the gnomes to them for free. She divided them into two groups of five and wrapped each gnome in newspaper, piling them into small boxes for safe transport back home. Greg’s set included the tiny gnome he used to play with in the bathtub. Katell’s included the one her grandmother had stolen about seventy years ago.  The drive home was mostly silent, but the silence was thoughtful, not awkward.
           
Then Greg Canning said, still astonished, “I can’t believe she stole the damn gnome.”
           
“She couldn’t find your baseball cards,” Katell reminded him.
           
He laughed and didn’t say anything more about it.
           
Katell’s dad and stepmom were standing on the lawn watching the boys blow bubbles when they got back. The entire family watched, slack-jawed, as Katell stepped out of Greg’s minivan carrying her small box of gnomes.
           
“Hi there,” said Greg, to the adults. To Katell, he said, “That was interesting, wasn’t it?”
           
“Thanks for the gnomes,” she said. “I mean, maybe you should’ve kept them all.”
           
“No, no.” His own box of gnomes was tucked under his arm. “You enjoy yours.”
           
Greg went into his house and Katell walked towards the front steps of Granny Durkee’s old house. She thought her dad and stepmom would question what illicit activity she’d been doing with Greg Canning, but they said nothing. Seeing Katell so blasé around Granny’s hated neighbor had clearly stunned them into silence.
           
In Katell’s new bedroom, she lined up the five gnomes on her windowsill. From her window, she could see the side of Greg’s house. She saw him through his kitchen window, leaning against the counter with a cup of tea and holding the smallest gnome is his free hand. He was gazing out his own window, over the two-foot fence, and into Granny Durkee’s garden.     
         
– Issie Patterson