The Tea Chest

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  He grasped my arms as I finished the story, wet his lips, excitement emanating from every part of him. “This is it for us then, Emma. Our chance. The Lord has delivered us, and we mustn’t hesitate.”

  I nodded, catching his enthusiasm.

  “And your parents? Are you certain you are ready to part with them?”

  “Aye. I was ready to part before I knew you were on my doorstep.” I thought of Mother and Father, of the harshness of Father’s words, calling me unspeakable names. “I have loved them the best I know how. But I do not feel I could ever stay in the chains they demand of me. When I saw that list, when I realized I could be set free, I felt something bigger—Someone bigger—was calling me to it. I am fully ready to begin anew, with you.”

  He pulled me closer, inch by inch, then swept a stray hair from my face. He leaned down and kissed my temple, trailing his mouth to the corner of mine, where he spoke. “Will you marry me as soon as we are able to find a preacher, then? Now that we are together, I don’t want to chance anyone tearing us apart.”

  “Yes,” I breathed. He dipped his head to mine then, moved his lips over my own, drawing me in with a restrained hunger that I felt just beyond his gentleness.

  This was what love was. My heart sang with gratitude for the gift.

  Finally we parted, both of us unsatisfied with the too-brief moment. “If I thought it safe, I would wake the reverend from his sleep this minute. But we should leave early tomorrow for Medford, at first light. Sarah and John will keep you until we can be married. I will find us a home and open my shop, and while it may be meager, I will work my fingers to the bones if it means supporting you. If it means having you as my wife.”

  I felt as if I would float on air the rest of my days. This was all I imagined and more. He kissed me again, and though it took all of our strength to part, I felt I could live on the anticipation of the rest of our lives together for the small hours until I would become his wife.

  Noah made up a bed of straw for me between the hearth and the press, told me he would wake me early, then gave me one last sweet kiss. “I am overcome with gratitude this night.” His eyes shone and I felt mine smarting as well.

  As I settled against the straw, I realized that had Father not been tarred and feathered, this moment would not be. Quite likely I would yet be planning a wedding to Samuel.

  I remembered a Scripture verse I’d heard from the pulpit at one time, how it had struck me as odd and almost nonsensical, but how in this moment it seemed to make perfect sense.

  “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good.”

  As Noah left to go to his bed, I breathed in the toasty air of the fire, my chest light.

  God meant it for good.

  I closed my eyes, sank into the knowing that a Creator cared for me enough to arrange the events of the past month. Overwhelming certainty and love flowed through my being, and I clutched it, begged for this holy presence to never leave my side.

  Sounds of men cheering came from the direction of the Liberty Tree, and I pulled the quilt tighter around me, grasped on to the promise of peace I’d just felt, trying—very hard—to ignore the growing tumult right outside Noah’s door.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Hayley

  THE HOLLOWNESS of the phone’s ring sounded in my ear. He wouldn’t answer. Certainly he had better things to do. And yet the thought of sharing my find with Ethan—of sharing what appeared to be a legitimate historical document that had been right under our noses—caused me to hold the phone tighter to my ear.

  “Hello?” The sound of tinkling glassware echoed in my ear alongside a woman’s soft laughter. Words froze on my tongue.

  “Hayley? What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled. “I should have texted you. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  Then I hung up.

  I paced the kitchen. Stupid. I was stupid. He’d said some nice things, wanted to clear up the past, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t already well past it. He’d been married, after all. His wife had died years earlier, and he dated.

  I’d interrupted his date.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I shook my head, looked at the paper I’d pulled from the bottom of the chest. It had lost its luster in my mind, its sparkling possibilities.

  I didn’t need Ethan, or any man, to come alongside me in this endeavor—this search for the remarkable. I could, and would, do this on my own. Hadn’t I always prided myself on just that?

  I brought the paper, slivers of wood still attached, to the dining room table and flipped on the light. I googled one of the signatures on the right side of the list. Henry Bass.

  Nothing but a couple of personal pages. I added the word historical at the end of his name and tried again. An ancestry page and some historical town pages appeared. I scanned the list again, the first result causing my heart to pick up speed.

  Henry Bass—Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum.

  I clicked on the result, found a two-sentence page stating Henry had been a merchant from Boston who had participated in the Boston Tea Party. He died in 1813.

  I stared at the two sentences. Could this oath actually have something to do with this history? I thought of the chest, my contemplations jumping ahead to what it could have been used for. No way.

  I began typing in the next name, but a harried knock came at my door.

  I left my phone on the table, peered through the peephole before opening it.

  An apology flew from my lips, this time sincere. “I’m so sorry, Ethan. I didn’t mean to interrupt—I shouldn’t have called.”

  His chest heaved. “What’s wrong? The way you hung up—I thought . . .”

  I would not blush. “I felt bad about taking you away from . . . whatever you were doing.”

  “I was having dinner. No biggie. Why’d you call?”

  I looked back at the chest lying on its side on the kitchen island. “We can talk about it when you have more time. Maybe I can stop by your shop tomorrow? Really, go back to whatever you were doing. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” I started to close the door, but he stopped it with his hand.

  “Hay, I wasn’t doing anything. And I’m done with dinner, so why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  I wondered if his date was waiting for him outside. I looked back at the chest again. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Let me in already, will you?”

  I allowed him entrance. His gaze landed on the chest, the splintered pieces of wood on the laminate counter.

  “I dropped it. It was dark and I don’t know the apartment well . . .”

  “You dropped it . . . then ripped it to pieces?”

  “I saw something in the bottom after it fell. A paper wedged in there. I took it apart.” I brought the brittle piece of parchment from the dining room and handed it to him. “Look.”

  He scanned it, flipped it over. Scanned it again. “This was in the bottom?”

  I nodded. “It’s legitimate, right? I mean, the thing is old.”

  He shook his head. “This is amazing. It looks authentic. But what is it? And why was it at the bottom of the chest?”

  I stepped closer, caught up in his excitement. “It says it’s an oath, but it’s hard to read the rest of the writing in the middle. I looked up one of the names. Some information about the Boston Tea Party came up, but I was going to see if the same came up for the others.”

  He sat at the table, nodded toward my phone. “Let’s check it out.”

  I googled the name below Henry Bass’s. George Hewes. A Wikipedia entry stated that George Robert Twelves Hewes (August 25, 1742–November 5, 1840) was a participant in the political protests in Boston, including both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.

  I typed in the next name, tried to rein in my excitement. John Fulton. There were more entries this time, but still, at the bottom of the page was one relating to the Tea Party. “This is amazing. This paper must have to do with the Tea Party, then, righ
t?”

  Ethan took out his phone, began googling more names.

  We spent the next hour searching each, reporting our findings to one another. More often than not, we’d find a record tying the name to the Tea Party.

  “Hey, look.” Ethan showed me the screen of his phone. “I knew it looked familiar, but I can’t believe I didn’t realize why.”

  I took his phone, scanned the page on the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum website titled “A Box Worth Keeping.” There, at the top, was a close-up picture of a tea chest found the morning after the Tea Party. A chest that looked nearly identical to the one on my counter.

  “No. Way.” I breathed the words, a lucid sort of magic heavy in the air. “You think this was actually a chest that was dumped that night?”

  Ethan scrolled through his phone. “There are two still in existence. One on display at the Boston Tea Party museum. The other at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in DC.”

  “And maybe this one.”

  His mouth pressed into a thin line.

  “You don’t think it is?” I asked.

  One corner of his mouth inched up in half a smile. “I guess I’ve learned the hard way. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.”

  I tore my gaze from his, suddenly uncomfortable. “Let’s keep looking,” I said, my voice soft.

  We worked together until we’d gone through as many of the names as we could make out among the nearly 120 of them. Not all of them yielded an entry pertinent to the Tea Party, but at least three-quarters of them did.

  Ethan and I sat back, the paper between us.

  “This is an oath they took, then? Maybe something having to do with dumping the tea? It has to be.”

  Ethan let out a short breath. “It seems it is, but we have to check it out. The smaller text in the middle is hard to read. You okay with me bringing this to my appraiser tomorrow? He’ll be able to tell us if there’s a chance any of it is authentic.”

  “Of course. Maybe he can tell us what the words in the middle say.” I dug through the kitchen drawers until I found a gallon-size freezer bag. I held it open while Ethan slipped the paper inside.

  “We might have to hand it over to the museum, Hayley. Finding out if this is authentic could cost thousands of dollars. I don’t know how much the Navy pays you, but my antique shop isn’t going to be able to foot that bill.”

  I nodded. “Let’s see what your guy says. Call me tomorrow?”

  He smiled and I realized how natural it seemed for him to be here. Comfortable. As if we hadn’t been apart for six years.

  He hefted the chest into his arms. “Hate to take your present back, but you can pick something else in the shop if you want.”

  “No way, Gagnon. That chest—and the list—is mine. I’m letting you borrow it, is all—got it?”

  He laughed. “Got it. But I’ll have you know I have a moral obligation to hand it over to the museum if my appraiser thinks it’s the real thing.”

  “It doesn’t mean we can’t do some investigating first, right?”

  “You really want me in on this with you?”

  I thought to throw out a witty, sarcastic comment. Something about only wanting him for his connections and historical insight, but looking at him, the chest beneath the crook of his arm, his head tilted endearingly to the side, I couldn’t thrust the joke from my mouth.

  “You’re the one who obtained it in the first place. You’re a part of this too.”

  He smiled. “You bet I am. Makes me wonder about the previous owners, though. They didn’t realize what they had.”

  I stared at the chest, nodded. “What’s the story behind it all, right?”

  “If it’s authentic, you mean.”

  “Why would someone go through the trouble of forging an oath like that, then hide it in the bottom of a chest never to be seen again? It has to be real.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but I could tell he didn’t want to squash my hopes.

  I recognized something in him, then. Something I hadn’t seen in him in high school. Something that made me sad.

  Defeat.

  The world had worn on Ethan, I saw that now. He had a weathered look about him as if afraid to hope for too much. I wondered at the disappointments life had dealt him. The death of his wife, perhaps the death of a career. He’d claimed to be making the best of it, but were those just words of bravado? What lay beneath them? And why did I feel guilty that maybe, just maybe, years ago, I’d contributed to that hopeless look, that shadow of defeat?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hayley

  THE VOICE ON THE OTHER end of the phone caused unexpected tears to poke my eyelids.

  I pushed them back. Tough and tears didn’t mix. I think Uncle Joe had told me that once.

  “Hey, kid. I got your text and I had a minute.”

  He was probably on some top secret mission. Soon I would be alongside him, soon we would share a camaraderie of serving our country in the most elite division of the United States military.

  “Thanks for calling, Uncle Joe,” I said.

  He swore softly. “Kid, I think it’s great you’re back home. And you know Lena—you never can tell, she just might surprise you.”

  “You think it’s crazy I feel I have to see her before BUD/S?”

  “No. I think you’re doing everything you can to prepare, and that’s smart.”

  His words soothed my soul, even as I wanted to push back at them, reach for deeper assurance.

  “You know, kid, if any woman can make the team, it’s you. I’m sure of that. But remember, this life . . . yeah, I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but it takes everything. Most of the guys who were married are on their way to divorce, either that or their wives are warming the beds of other men. And their kids? Forget it. They’re almost strangers. Some of them can hold it together, I guess, but for most of us, it’s a dead-end road. And if we have to choose, we choose the team. Always the team.”

  I thought of Uncle Joe’s own brief, failed marriage. I had never prioritized such things in my life. A spouse. Marriage. Family.

  For a fleeting second, I thought of Ethan, of how my life might have played out if I’d stayed in Massachusetts all those years ago, if I hadn’t enlisted in the Navy. Would Ethan and I have gotten married? Had children? The thought was so preposterous, so out of sync with anything I’d dreamed before, that I cast it aside.

  Who would I have become if not for the Navy? Military life was hard, but it had made me strong. It had given me the gifts of independence, knowing I was capable, and a dependable family. It had stripped down the distraction of outside forces and in many ways, simplified my priorities to what I knew I could count on—myself and my team.

  I recalled Ethan leaving the night before, the tea chest beneath his arm. I still hadn’t heard from him, and though I hated to admit it, I looked forward to his voice on the other end of the phone as much as I looked forward to any information he’d found.

  Yet a relationship? It could never work. Ethan would never understand the part of me that would always long to be free. Independent. If I were to ever marry, it would no doubt be to a military man, not a civilian, someone who respected my need to fly free, someone who understood my near-obsessive commitment to my Navy family.

  “When you gonna go and see her?” Uncle Joe asked.

  “I tried to yesterday. She’s in Barbados.” Bitterness dripped over my words, and I hated myself for it.

  Uncle Joe didn’t take the bait. “Tell her I said hi.”

  “Sure.”

  A sigh from him. “You’re ready, kid. You don’t have to be afraid to face your past if you’re certain of what you’re about now.”

  He was right. In a way, it was why I’d come back home in the first place. To prove I’d conquered my troubled childhood. To prove I was beyond it all—to myself, yes, but maybe also to Lena.

  “Thanks, Uncle Joe.”

  “Text anytime, kid. I’m praying
for you.”

  We hung up and I stared at the phone screen until it went black.

  I’d always chosen to believe that pain made you stronger. That growing up with Lena had made me more resilient, more mentally capable. Had I twisted my circumstances around to force something positive from them?

  Uncle Joe’s words came back to me.

  “You don’t have to be afraid to face your past if you’re certain of what you’re about now.”

  I knew what I was about. I was about serving my country and my team. I was about strength and determination and not letting anything hold me back.

  Why then did Ethan’s image, tea chest beneath his arm, pop back into my mind? Why did it make me doubt, maybe for the first time, if all of that was enough?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Hayley

  THE BELL ABOVE the door of Revere Antiques called a greeting when I opened it. A smattering of customers perused the downstairs clutter.

  Ethan had called not ten minutes ago, asking me to come down, said he thought he had some answers about the oath. And while I convinced myself it wasn’t desperate to show up so soon—I’d already completed a ten-mile run that morning—there was a small part of me that couldn’t reconcile the contradiction: training to save my country from its most dangerous threats, yet practically jumping out of my skin over a phone call.

  I would sort it all out soon enough. I had twenty more days before I reported for BUD/S—plenty of time to tame my mind. I had this under control.

  “Hello.” An older woman in a flowered blouse—Braden’s grandmother, I assumed—called out from behind the front counter.

  “Hi. I was looking for Ethan?”

  “I think he’s upstairs.”

  I smiled my thanks and went around the corner, lightly jogging up the stairs, the burn in my muscles familiar and satisfying.

  When he heard me, Ethan turned from a crouching position in front of a Radio Flyer wagon. “Hey, Hay.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You always were a bit of a dweeb—you know that, right?”