The Tea Chest

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  He smiled, his jovial mood infectious. “Is that why you first went out with me? Sympathy date?”

  I tried to suppress a smile. “Something like that.”

  I’d first met him in a co-ed gym class. Four-hundred-meter run. I’d finished before all the boys.

  All except one.

  That was the draw for me—not his intellectual mind or National Honor Society grades. It was because he was the one guy I couldn’t beat in a race.

  He’d teased me often after that, mostly in the halls in passing. I could still remember his tousled hair, just a bit too long. The way he would pass my locker and lean down. “Let me know when you want a rematch, Ashworth.”

  I’d push him away in a flirty kind of way, something foreign for me until that moment. I remember him winking at me. That wink sent heat deep into the pit of my belly and then all the way down to my toes.

  He’d smiled, leaned closer again. “I don’t push girls, but it’s nice to know I can outrun you if I need to.”

  I scowled at him, actually enjoying the attention. Most boys looked past me. Except on the track, I was good at blending in. But Ethan . . . for whatever reason, I had earned my way onto his radar.

  “Seriously, Ashworth. You want to run together sometime? I’m thinking about joining the cross-country team at Framingham this fall, and I need a training partner. You interested?”

  I hadn’t said yes right away. He’d asked several more times before I finally gave in.

  He stopped calling me “Ashworth” after our second run. He’d asked me to the movies on our fourth. By that summer, we were seeing each other every night after our respective workdays—me as a lifeguard, him running the go-karts at the rec center.

  I sighed, blinked. We were a long way from cross-country and go-karts, high school and first loves. We were adulting it now, forced to live in the world even if we didn’t feel quite ready or “grown-up” enough for what the world brought us.

  “So what did your guy say?” I held my breath. If Ethan’s appraiser deemed the chest a fake or simply an old relic without a significant past, where did that leave us? And why did the answer to that question bother me?

  “He said he can’t be 100 percent sure without taking chemical samples, but based on the artwork, the script of the letter, the deterioration of the wood and the type, which seems true to the time of colonial Boston, he said it all seems authentic, including the paper.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.” That contagious smile again. He truly was the king of corniness.

  “So what now? You want to bring it to the museum, is that it?”

  “I think it’s the only right way to go about this, don’t you? If they think it’s real, they’ll put the money behind it to find out. And as far as the oath, they have the top historians in the country at their disposal to figure it all out. What do we have?”

  “Us,” I said, the word sounding ten times more intimate than I’d meant it to.

  He caught my gaze. “We have to hand it over, Hay. For the sake of historical preservation.”

  “Seems it’s been preserved pretty well all these years without the bigwigs behind it.” I closed my eyes, shook my head. “Yes, you’re right—of course you’re right. I was just excited about figuring out the story, you know? Maybe we can hold off bringing it for a little bit?”

  This was crazy. I was crazy. How did I think I had time to solve a mystery in the middle of training to be a SEAL?

  He shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t know. . . . It feels like a big responsibility to hold on to something with so much potential value.”

  “Two weeks, Ethan. I have to be in California in twenty days. Let’s give ourselves fourteen days to find what we can find. Besides, I could use the distraction.” Was I really inviting him into this with me? Did I really want to spend more time with this man who seemed to draw me into the past, who created feelings as rocky as a trawler in the teeth of a storm?

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to risk one of the greatest finds of this year—probably of this century, definitely of my life—so you can have a distraction? What about your training? Hayley, what about Lena?”

  “There’ll be time for all that. If anything, it will help my discipline. I need to use both my mind and my muscles, and this will be a great project for that.”

  He raked a hand through his hair, his short-sleeved shirt pulling upward to show tanned biceps. “Ten days.”

  I stuck out my hand. “Deal.”

  He broke into a grin, gripped my hand. “You’re not the only one excited. I’ve been waiting for a find like this since I took over the store. Crazy that it was right under my nose. I want to find out what’s behind that chest too.”

  My breaths came fast. For the first time since I’d gotten accepted into BUD/S, I felt . . . alive. Was it the history surrounding the tea chest, the fact that finding it with Ethan seemed like so much more than coincidence, or was it only as I claimed—simply a matter of distraction? Maybe all I was doing was procrastinating about seeing my mother.

  And yet something deep within niggled. As if it were so much more than distraction or procrastination. As if it were the feel of his hand in mine, the personal history winding around us and between us, beckoning us back to another time and place. I’d told myself once that it had all been a lie. That for me, real love would never exist. But now, with my hand warm within his own, I faced the possibility that for Ethan, our love, though young, had never been a lie.

  I took my hand from his, ready to grasp at something else. Anything else. I ignored my skin, warm from his touch. “So what’s the next step? Did your appraiser say anything else?”

  He pointed to the stairs. “I’ll show you.”

  The shop had emptied. The woman behind the counter took cash from a couple holding an old decorative sign shaped like a cow that read, “Be Healthy. Drink Milk.”

  The couple finished their transaction and left. Ethan gestured to the woman. “Hayley, this is Ida, my one and only loyal employee.”

  I shook hands with Ida. Her palm was cool. Her glasses slipped down her nose and she pushed them up to her graying brows. “You’re the young woman who helped my Braden, aren’t you?”

  “That’s her,” Ethan said.

  Ida threw fleshy arms around me, pinning me in a tight embrace. I stood frozen, patient while she finished the hug. “I’ve been thanking the Lord you were there when you were.” She pulled away. “Thank you, dear. Thank you.”

  I shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. “No problem, really. That undertow was brutal, though. It really wasn’t Ethan’s fault.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t. I’m just thankful all is well.” She turned to Ethan. “I’m going to head out now, boss. We did good today. Sold your last walnut round table, with a request for five more from a restaurant owner in Boston. Looks like you got your work cut out for you.”

  I perused the shelves of military paraphernalia near the counter to allow them to talk business.

  “Thanks, Ida. I have a proposition for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You were going away at the beginning of August to see your family, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  I walked farther away from them, felt like an intruder, but still listened to Ethan’s voice. I studied a clock made out of wood planks, the numbers roman numerals.

  “Any chance you could take over the daily running of the shop for the next week? Open and close, keep up with the orders as best you can?”

  My stomach fluttered. Was Ethan taking the time off for me? For the chest, rather?

  “I suppose so—”

  “I was thinking a fair trade would be an extra paid two weeks off in August. What do you think?”

  “That sounds mighty fine to me, but August is busy, Ethan. Can you do without me?”

  “If you can manage without me for the next week . . .”

  “Okay, let’s
give it a shot.”

  I could hear the smile in Ethan’s voice. “Great. I’ll come in early tomorrow and go over a few things. I’m not going far, so I’ll only be a phone call away.”

  “Okeydokey. I’ll talk to you then.”

  I smiled and waved good-bye to Ida as she bustled out the door. Ethan locked it behind her, flipped the sign so it read Closed.

  “Nice lady,” I said.

  “She’s the best. After Allison died, her parents tried to stay on with the shop, but it was too much for them. I’d met Ida at church. She’d just lost her husband to a long battle with cancer and was looking for a way to fill her time. We just fit together well.”

  I swallowed. “What happened to Allison’s parents?”

  “They moved down to Florida. Wanted to get away from the memories.”

  “And you kept the shop running.”

  “It was a healing thing at first, felt like a way to keep her alive.” He sighed, looked around the crammed shop. “She loved this place, grew up here.”

  I wanted to ask if he ran the shop for his wife’s memory alone, if any part of him truly felt passionate about it, but it all seemed too invasive.

  “Is it hard for you to be here still? You know . . . because of her?” I wondered if it was odd for him that I should be here now, his old girlfriend.

  “It was at first. I guess it still is in some ways. But I’ve also changed the shop a lot too. Added original pieces, made it my own. Somewhere along the way it stopped being Allison’s parents’ shop, or even Allison’s shop—it became mine.” The tender way he spoke left no doubt in my mind that he didn’t run the shop only for his dead wife. Listening to him, trying to understand him better, I felt happy for all he’d accomplished, for all that was ahead of him.

  “So what did you want to show me?”

  “Right.” He knelt behind the desk and picked up the chest, placed it with care on the front counter. He scooped up a photocopy on the inside of the chest, showed it to me. “My appraiser was able to scan the list, play around with some of the color and contrast settings with his editing software. Look.”

  I took the paper. The list was blown up and darkened to magnify the center of the paper. The words that were illegible last night beneath the heading Oath of Secrecy were now clear.

  Bound together in secrecy, we pledge our silence for the cause of the colonies. If any man should break this silence or bear witness against his brother, he forfeits the right to honor and will subject himself to publik ridicule, claiming himself an enemy to his country. Each signer agrees to vandalize no property save tea, to commit no mayhem, and to guard this secret until his dying breath.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “Serious stuff.”

  Ethan nodded. “I knew the destroyers of the tea took an oath of secrecy, but I never thought they went so far as to sign their names to paper. Seems that would be incriminating.”

  I placed the paper back inside the chest. “And yet it would be something to hold them accountable. A solid proof of honor in a time when a man’s honor was everything.”

  “I did more research online last night. There’s a list of participants, numbering around 115. Most did indeed remain anonymous for years after the dumping of the tea, not only scared of punishment but fearful of ridicule long after our country was founded. Destroying private property wasn’t looked at as something honorable by all. George Washington himself condemned the dumping of the tea. So yes, it was a matter of honor—an honor to keep their secret, but also a possibility of ruining their good names if found out.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t get it—didn’t Sam Adams and all them put these guys up to this? Wasn’t this the Patriots’ doing?”

  “It was. But the Patriot leaders—Sam Adams, John Hancock, Josiah Quincy, and the like—were very careful to disassociate themselves from the men who dumped the tea. From what I read, they went as far as to have an alibi, staying at Old South meetinghouse well past the hour when the tea would have been dumped.”

  “So they got these men to do their dirty work.”

  Ethan laughed. “I think they were eager to do the work, but let’s try to find out ourselves.”

  I leaned my arms on the counter, pressed the toe of my flip-flop backward on the wood floor, causing the separation between my toes to press into my skin. “Where do we start?”

  “I think we should visit the museum. Get a better feel for what we’re dealing with. Then I’d like to take a trip to Medford, where I bought the chest in the estate sale. Maybe we could find someone who could tell us the history of the family. I mean, why didn’t they know this was hidden in the chest? And who on this list was a part of their family, if anyone?”

  Though my heart quaked at the mention of my hometown, I knew he was right.

  I looked at the chest, worn and not incredibly pretty, but precious all the same. What had it been through? Out of all those names on that list, would we ever find which one belonged to the chest? And if we did, would we find the story behind it all?

  “I’m in, of course,” I said.

  “Great. Tours start at ten. Eight thirty too early for me to pick you up?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You clearly have never been on a ship. Eight thirty is practically midday for me.”

  He laughed, looked at me with those piercing green eyes again as if he were trying to see beyond me, as if he searched for clues not just to the historical mystery before us, but to the life I had lived without him.

  Maybe I only flattered myself to think so. Maybe I thought such things because I was wondering about him, too. Wondering how he’d met Allison, wondering how her death still affected him. He’d said things were complicated when she died—what did that mean?

  I had the next ten days to find out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Hayley

  I LOOKED DOWN at the card the woman in colonial costume handed me. Ethan and I sat in a pew, the room with wide windows crammed with other tour guests, a single pulpit raised before us and off to the side. We’d been given a feather upon entering the Boston Tea Party museum—this room being a simple replica of Old South meetinghouse.

  The name on my card dubbed me Joseph Shed, a forty-one-year-old carpenter who had helped with the reconstruction of Faneuil Hall. The card stated some men disguised themselves at Joseph’s residence before dumping the tea.

  I looked at Ethan’s card: Joseph Lovering, a fifteen-year-old who snuck out past his curfew to join those at Griffin’s Wharf.

  “Do you remember either of their names from the list?”

  Ethan shook his head. “There were so many.”

  Neither rang a bell for me either.

  The tour started and the woman who gave us the cards introduced herself as Frances Gore Crafts, wife of Thomas Crafts, one of the Loyal Nine who had participated in the Stamp Act riots. She stated how her husband was recently accused of being a Tory over his hesitation to aid in violent protests. She told us of her own father being loyal to the king, and though the political tension in their home was great, she had chosen to stand on the side of liberty, believing something must be done to make their voices heard.

  Samuel Adams came to the pulpit amid a chorus of “Huzzahs!” He explained the dilemma of the tea that must not be unloaded, how one of the owners of the ships had gone to see Governor Hutchinson to ask that the tea be returned to England.

  The costumed Sam Adams effectively riled up the crowd with reminders of the colony’s own losses in the French and Indian War, the Boston Massacre, being taxed without the same rights as Englishmen.

  The meeting ended with information that the merchant had returned with the governor’s refusal of the colonists’ requests. More groans and shouts of “Fie!” before we saw our only option before us: dump the tea.

  We made our way onto the ship, the cool breeze from Boston Harbor serving to sweep away the stickiness of the hot air. Some of the kids dumped “chests” of tea tied to the ship. We toured the replica of the Dar
tmouth, full of hogsheads and tea chests marked with the East India logo. A guide explained to us how the Tea Party members would haul the chests up to the deck of the ship, hack open the chests, which were protected by a lead lining, scoop firmly packed tea leaves into the harbor, then destroy the chests as best they could and throw them in the water alongside the tea. With such destruction, I didn’t see how a tea chest from the night of December 16, 1773, could possibly still be intact today.

  My hopes that our chest—the one Ethan and I discovered—had actually been involved in the dumping of the tea faded. What were the chances?

  We climbed the stairs of the ship, following the crowd into the back of the museum.

  Before I could ask Ethan his thoughts, we rounded a dark corner and came face-to-face with a beautiful cylindrical display case. Inside sat a chest similar to the one we’d found. Lights shone down upon the circling artifact, so obviously old and worn, whispering a hundred historical secrets.

  I grabbed Ethan’s arm in my excitement. We’d known it was here, had seen pictures of it online, but being in the same room as such a relic of history assured me that if this one survived the dumping, no doubt there could be another.

  He rested his hand over mine and squeezed, the gesture natural.

  Our guide explained how the chest on display had been discovered by a young John Robinson on a beach near Dorchester Heights on the morning of December 17, 1773. It had stayed in the family for seventy years until it was passed to a distant family member as a thank-you gift. The chest was passed down within the family—even used as a bed for kittens at one time—until finally, it landed in the hands of a Helen Ford Waring, who would begin a ten-year quest to weave together the provenance of the relic.

  The group filed out of the room, but Ethan and I lingered, watching the chest—identical to ours save for a marking on the bottom—as it revolved inside the case.

  “Ten years it took her to piece together the history of her chest. Guess we’re a little arrogant to think we’re going to figure it all out in ten days, huh?” I said.