“Did I tell you about the time Aunt Jen and I found a wooden box on the beach?” Molly pulled her jacket tighter against the chill that had descended along with the sunset. Her three kids sat around the fire with her, listening to the crackle of the flames as the night around them darkened.
“A treasure chest?” Aaron, the romantic in her crew, clapped his hands in anticipation. She smiled. Of course his imagination would leapt to a tale of pirates and doubloons. This was his birthday weekend, the reason they were camping.
“I’m afraid not,” Molly said. “It was a small box, room for only two or three coins. That’s not much booty.” She held up her hands to mime the size—more of a ring box than anything.
Aaron’s face registered disappointment, but Lara perked up. “Jewelry!” She was a year older than Aaron. “Earrings and gold strands, I’ll bet.”
Not willing to be outdone by his sister, Aaron immediately countered. “It was a tiny map that led to buried treasure.”
“No.” Treena, at thirteen, two years older than Lara, filled the captain’s role for Molly’s gang of three. She offered her pronouncements calmly but forcefully. One day she’d be a CEO, Molly predicted. “Let Mom finish her story. I doubt it was any of those things.”
“Do you want to venture a guess?” Molly put another piece of wood on the fire. They were camped on a friend’s property, on their way to the Jersey Shore, their destination for tomorrow. “What I remember best was that the top of the box had an octopus carved into it. Its tentacles hugged the sides.”
“Where is it now? Or did you lose it?” Treena’s gaze challenged Molly, a more and more frequent occurrence these days. And just like the teen to hit on the stickiest part of the story.
What possessed me to bring up the box?
“Your dad took it when he left.” Molly stirred the fire again to buy some time. “So, no, I don’t have it. He may have tossed it.” Like so much else Kurt had tossed in their lives. It took years of not seeing that—until the day it was so obvious she cringed.
“You still haven’t said what was in the box.” Lara was hopping from one foot to the other.
“And why would Dad want to take it when it was yours?”
Precisely because it was hers. She’d searched for it in the days after he walked out, even as she grasped that the empty spot in her drawer was there because he couldn’t resist one last blow. Still, she refused to talk trash about her ex; he had visitation rights.
“In the box …” Molly let the words linger. “No gold coins, no jewelry, no treasure map. Aunt Jen was probably thirteen, like you, Treena. That would have made me twelve.” She’d kept the box despite its warped wood and a chipped corner, despite Jen’s worry it was infested with sand fleas (it wasn’t). She’d kept the box as a memento of her childhood, of a time when Jen was strong and healthy.
“When we pried it open, we thought we’d find a note written by someone who was lost at sea.” It hadn’t occurred to them that any paper note would have turned to pulp.
“But it was empty,” Treena said. Her tone shaded in her opinion: stupid story.
“It was not empty.” Nestled inside was a pair of dog tags, pitted and corroded by years soaking in saltwater. She and Jen could make out the soldier’s first name, but the last name and military ID were undecipherable. Blood type O+, religion Lutheran. They guessed Navy, but it could have been Army—only the “y” at the end of the word was clear. They also guessed at the war, the same one their great-grandfather had fought in.
For years, Molly studied the dog tags and wondered. Was he already dead or about to drown when the tags were stashed in the box? Who would have removed them and why? His imagined face surfaced in her teenage dreams; a young face, of course, a face far different from the man she ended up marrying.
When their third child was born—finally, Kurt said, a son—she named him Aaron, to honor that long-dead sailor. Kurt didn’t understand her fascination, and maybe she didn’t either. She just knew she was drawn to the stranger.
“Your namesake,” Molly finally said to her son. “That’s what was in the box. That’s why I told the story tonight. It’s a true birthday tale.”
More of Dianna’s stories
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“Did I tell you about the time Aunt Jen and I found a wooden box on the beach?” Molly pulled her jacket tighter against the chill that had descended along with the sunset. Her three kids sat around the fire with her, listening to the crackle of the flames as the night around them darkened.
-
Lily pressed her flowered handkerchief to her forehead and wondered for the fifth time that day why she had signed up for the Festival of the Earth event.
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The accountant opened the folder and skimmed the stack of documents it contained. A W-2, 1099s, receipts, investment summaries, it was all there, Annie hoped. Matt always left it up to her to compile the papers needed before they sat down with Tom, their CPA. Her business was laden with supply orders, customer invoices, and back-end pay-outs. Matt worked in analytical statistics for a pharma company: salary, health insurance, 401(K), easy-peasy.
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The conversations murmuring around her provided white noise for Erica as she sat at her laptop in the busy coffeeshop. One more chapter to finish. Then a scrap of an exchange broke through her deep concentration.
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Shaun held the framed photo of his grandfather and traced the image with his finger.
“He was such a great man.”
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Hi Dianna, How lovely!
Thanks, Veronica!