I had one last question: How did the album end up on the curb?

After her aunt died, Joann Barnes came from Raleigh to arrange the funeral in Brooklyn. She hadn’t been to Lincoln Place in years and was surprised by how little her aunt’s home had changed. She had moved into the back rooms and left the rest untouched.

Everything was from the 1950s — the kitchen sink and cabinets, the furniture in the living room, which was covered in plastic. In Ike’s old office, there was a record player, hundreds of records, and a shelf with glasses and little stirrers, the remnants of his bar.

The closets were stuffed with linens and old clothes. When she went to dry her hands after washing them in the bathroom, the hand towel was so old it split in two. She was tired from the funeral, and overwhelmed. She just wanted to get home.

She packed up some wedding dishes for her sister, a few pots and pans. For herself, she took some change from a drawer. “A silver dollar, some old coins,” she said. “That’s just me. I have my memory of her and our trips and what we did together. I’m not a keeper.”

As she got ready to go, Ms. Jones came in. “She asked me if I was coming back,” Ms. Barnes said, “and I said no. ‘Open the doors and let the neighbors come and take what they want. Just open it up.’”

In the weeks afterward, Ms. Jones worked her way through the apartment. She bagged up the clothes. She pulled the records off the shelf. She boxed up Etta Mae’s books. When she found the album, she tied it up with twine. And one evening, before the trucks came to pick up the recycling, she carried it outside with a few boxes and left it on the curb.

A few minutes, or a few hours, passed. Then, just as Etta Mae had walked past my house so many times before, I walked by hers, picked up her album and carried it home.