The Tea Chest

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  “I’m sorry, Emma . . .”

  I sniffed back tears, tried to ignore a sudden harsh cramp climbing my belly.

  “Whatever do you have to apologize for, you silly man?” I forced my tone light, not yet ready to face the heaviness of our situation.

  “I made a . . . poor decision on the battlefield. I should have stayed behind the fortification . . . tried to help . . .”

  I smoothed his hair back upon his head. “Noah Winslow, you are the most intelligent man I know. If you made a poor decision, ’tis not a matter to dwell on.”

  He dragged in a shaky breath, and I tried to keep myself upright, showing no signs of pain as another cramp—stronger this time—tore through my middle.

  “You should rest. Go home, please.”

  “I will. Shortly. Though I can’t imagine leaving your side. Mayhap I can get some able-bodied men to bring you home?”

  “Aye. That would be good.” His watery gaze flicked to a flock of geese flying across the sky, their calls echoing in the silent morning. “Is it . . . bad?”

  “Noah, as long as you are well—”

  “Please, answer me. I need to face it sooner or later.”

  “’Twill take getting accustomed to, is all.”

  With much effort, he propped himself up on his elbows, stared at the bloodied stump of his bandaged leg, closed his eyes in defeat before lowering himself back to the table. When he opened them to look up toward the sky, foreign bitterness showed upon his features. “I am but half a man.”

  I positioned myself over him so he could see my face. The cramp that had gripped me dulled and I grasped the moment to encourage my husband. I placed my hand over his heart. “Noah, ’tis not your legs that make you a man. ’Tis your heart. I did not run away with you because you could dance a jig better than the others, but because you are a good and honorable man. One who believes in liberty. One who loves me and one whom I love. Last I checked, you needn’t two legs to do any of that.”

  His face crumpled at my words, and he breathed deep, trying to control his emotion.

  “Emma, can you come?” Sarah’s voice from behind.

  I squeezed Noah’s hand, kissed his whiskered face, and turned before he could see my own tears.

  Sarah met me several yards from my husband. “You’re bleeding.”

  I looked down at my dress, streaked with blood and mud. Searched my arms, my sleeves pushed up to my elbows. “’Tis the men’s blood. It—”

  Just then a massive pain tore through my womb. A gush of liquid burst between my legs.

  And I knew.

  Once again, Sarah supported me. “’Tis too early,” I whimpered.

  She waited for the pain to pass. “Let’s get you home.” She guided me toward the edge of the field, and when she saw a wheelbarrow loaded with dressings, she dumped it out on the dew of the lawn and eased me into it.

  We must have been a sight, her pushing my rounded body over Cradock Bridge and up the main thoroughfare in the wheelbarrow, but no one questioned us or bothered to assist, so busy were they with the wounded soldiers.

  I placed my hand over my full womb, praying the child within would hold tight. Mayhap once I rested . . .

  Sarah stopped at the entrance to my home and helped me out just as another pain ravaged my body. This time I cried out.

  I must keep this baby. I must.

  For Noah, who considered himself a broken man. One who had fought for the liberty, for the betterment of his children.

  I must keep this baby. I must keep it for my husband.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Hayley

  MELISSA APPEARED BEHIND the screen door, this time with Wyatt in her arms. “Good, you came back!”

  She opened the door, allowing us into the house.

  “Thanks for letting us.” Ethan’s words echoed off the bare walls and empty room, nothing but scuffed wooden floor. I tried to imagine it filled with both furniture and people, some that I’d glimpsed in the album the day before. For some reason, it saddened me to think of its end with this family.

  “I’m afraid the chairs in the back are all that’s left.” She scooped up a rather unwieldy brown book with a picture of a tree on the front and led us to the back patio. A near-empty hummingbird feeder hung beside the table, and flowers of all colors grew abundant along the paths, lending a cheery quality to the place.

  We sat, and she slid the book toward us. The front read, Our Family Tree. Kinsleys.

  Ethan opened it, flipping through with care. Not only was it filled with branches of the Kinsley family tree, it included pictures and notable newspaper articles.

  “Wow, this is really . . . extensive.” I didn’t know what I had thought—that we’d be able to flip through and find something of meaning, maybe? Something that might connect us to the chest and the oath within? But looking at the all-encompassing project, I realized this clearly could not be done in an hour or so.

  Melissa laughed. “Yes, it is. Full of interesting history, too. Of course, it’s my family—probably more interesting to me than you two.”

  Ethan turned another page. A newspaper article stating a local election win. If I could peel back the past of my own family, would I find some long-lost relative who had run for selectman? Someone who had fought in a war, fallen in love with a high school sweetheart, or chased dreams of owning their own business? Seeing the book through Melissa’s eyes made me think of how precious family could be, and suddenly I felt hollow.

  “No, it is interesting,” Ethan said. “And who knows? Maybe something having to do with the chest is in here.”

  “I don’t remember seeing anything, but if you guys want to borrow it for a few days to look into it, that’d be fine with me.”

  I looked up. “Really? I mean, we’d take good care of it, but . . . I don’t know if I feel okay with that.”

  Ethan shook his head. “Yeah, me neither.”

  “It is valuable, and it means a lot to me, but my uncle had extras printed for future generations, and it’s all digital now, too. My mom had one copy, but there are more if something happened to this one. Besides, whatever that chest meant to Gram, I can tell you’re just as invested. Go ahead, take it. Give me a call when you’re done with it and we’ll meet up somewhere.”

  “Are you sure?” Ethan asked.

  “Absolutely.” She smiled in a sheepish manner. “I have to admit, you have me curious, only I don’t have time to look into any of it myself right now. Maybe we’ll both find some interesting history by the time you’re through.” She stood, signaling the end of the conversation. I closed the book and cradled it in my arms, knowing its worth to Melissa, wanting to live up to the trust she placed in me and Ethan. Wyatt bounced himself on his mother’s hip, then reached a hand to me.

  I held out a finger, let him grasp it. Wow, kids could be really cute.

  “Thank you so much, Melissa. We promise to take good care of it.”

  “I know you will.” She led us back through the house and opened the screen door for us. “Have fun, now, and don’t forget to call me when you find what you’re looking for.”

  If we found what we were looking for.

  Ethan didn’t ask if I wanted him to turn down Vine Street this time. I’d probably scared him with my little episode the other day. Truth be told, I scared myself, spent most of the night convincing myself that one weak moment did not mean I was weak. I would learn from the experience, be more careful not to let my guard down in the future.

  SEALs didn’t let their guard down.

  SEALs didn’t fail.

  Now we sat in the cool of the slight shade of the deck off my apartment. The ocean stretched before us, the beach packed on the warm day.

  I leaned back in my chair. “I don’t know, Ethan. This is all interesting, but do you really think it’s going to lead anywhere?” I looked at a drawing of Tufts College, circa 1854. Below told the story of William Davis, an ancestor of the Kinsleys who taught at the college.
r />   Ethan took a swig of his iced tea. I’d asked him if he wanted a beer, but he’d declined with an explanation that he didn’t drink anymore.

  Definitely not the Ethan I remembered.

  Not that I was a lush or anything, but especially since joining the military, I associated downtime with a drink or two. I sat back, eyed the man before me. He’d seen an unpleasant side of me yesterday, a side most of my comrades hadn’t seen, a side I barely saw. Maybe it was his turn to open up. “How come you don’t drink anymore?”

  “That’s a change of subject.” He pushed the book onto the table, raked a hand through his hair. I could tell before he opened his mouth that he would once again bare a part of himself to me. His honesty and sincerity wore at one of those soft spots in my heart, and I braced myself.

  “The boat accident that killed Allison? We were drinking. Us and another couple. Allison and I had been arguing. I went below deck to get away from her, and Allison took over the ship’s wheel. The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital with two broken legs, being told my wife was dead.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He sniffed, hard. “Me too. Allison and I . . . we’d been arguing a lot. Trying to figure out if our new marriage was even worth working for. We drank a lot too, especially when we couldn’t find the answers we needed. Seemed a better alternative to arguing. The alcohol made us forget why we were so angry in the first place. Sometimes. Other times, it brought that anger to the surface. That night was one of those nights. What was said . . . it’s not important now, but I haven’t taken a drink since.” He shrugged. “It’s a personal thing, you know? Like I don’t trust that I could handle it.”

  My insides grew tight. “I had no idea.”

  He gave me a small smile. “Of course you didn’t.”

  Why did I feel like that was my fault?

  I noted storm clouds in the distance, billowing high on the horizon.

  I pulled the book toward me, wishing I hadn’t brought up the drinking thing at all. I turned another page, chronicling the members of a branch of the Kinsley family tree and their role in the Civil War. Two men of the family had given their lives for the cause of the North. A Jack Kinsley and a Michael Ashworth.

  I hesitated at the last name of the latter but brushed it off quick. Surely my surname was common enough.

  “I wish there was more information on the women in the family,” I mused, hoping Ethan would let the previous subject drop.

  He seemed to take the hint, for he turned another page, then another and another.

  “Wait, what are you doing?”

  “Getting right to the Revolution. Maybe we’ll actually find something about the chest there.”

  I leaned closer to him, saw a sketch labeled The Battle of Bunker Hill. It looked familiar—a wounded man central to the painting in the arms of another, who attempted to ward off advancing Redcoats. Smoke and raised flags appeared in the background, wounded or dying men in the foreground.

  Below it the caption read: Noah Winslow fought alongside General Warren at Bunker Hill.

  “Noah Winslow,” Ethan said, the previous tension between us disappearing beneath the possibility of discovery.

  I put my hand on Ethan’s arm. “Wait.” I went inside the apartment and grabbed the photocopy Ethan had made of the oath, scanned the page for the familiar name. “Yes!” There it was.

  Noah Winslow.

  Ethan squeezed my shoulder. “All right. We got something.”

  My face warmed at his touch. I curled my leg beneath me, pointed at Noah’s name in the genealogy book. “This must be him then, right? The guy who put the oath in the chest?”

  Ethan’s brow furrowed. “Maybe . . . but why, if it was handed down all those years as something of import, did Melissa not know about it?”

  “The chain was broken. Someone didn’t pass on the information.”

  “Or Noah didn’t reveal the information, or the history of the chest, but it got passed down anyway.”

  “And then there’s the question of how he got the chest in the first place. If he was a participant in the Tea Party, from what we learned at the museum yesterday, there is no way he should have walked away with anything, much less a chest of tea. Didn’t they nearly tar and feather someone who pocketed the tea?”

  Ethan nodded. “Yeah, I don’t understand it. Seems if he was keeper of such an important oath, he would have been trusted, a man of integrity. Not one to sneak a chest of tea off the ship.”

  I laughed as I remembered carrying home the empty chest. “Besides the fact that there was no sneaking around with something that unwieldy.”

  “Right.” Ethan pointed to a small paragraph below the Bunker Hill caption on Noah Winslow.

  Noah Winslow was the husband of Emma Malcolm and the father of Jacob Winslow. It appears he was a close friend of John Fulton, a bookkeeper at the Medford distillery, who wrote of Noah’s participation in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

  A picture of a handwritten list—this one in columns—sat below the caption. It was filled with the names of those who had fought at Bunker Hill. Noah’s name was circled in red.

  Ethan flipped the page, but it contained nothing more than a brief note to the reader from Melissa’s uncle, Jed Kinsley. “Not much more to go on.”

  “Maybe we should take a trip to the library or search Bunker Hill online. Or John Fulton. Wait . . .” I scanned the list we’d found in the chest, pointed to John Fulton’s name.

  Ethan took out his phone, navigated to the Boston Tea Party website. “John’s listed as a participant. Noah isn’t.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe . . .” He typed on his phone again. Within minutes, he’d pulled up a page of the National Park Service, Boston division. It was a roster of those at Bunker Hill. I looked over Ethan’s shoulder as he scrolled to the Ws.

  I pointed. “There.”

  Again, our guy’s name.

  Noah Winslow* (W)

  Town: Medford

  Rank: Lieutenant

  Regiment: Prescott’s

  “What does all that mean?”

  Ethan scrolled back to the top of the page. “The asterisk means he received money for his service in the battle. The W means he was wounded.”

  “The book didn’t mention all that.”

  “The book was written a while ago. Researchers may have found more details since then. I say we visit the historical society, ask for help with more information finding Noah.” He opened a new tab on his phone, typed the society’s name into Google. He groaned. “They’re only open on Sunday afternoons. Looks like we have a couple days to wait.”

  “Let’s try the library, then.”

  Ethan agreed and we gathered our things just as large drops of rain splattered on the composite deck boards. A crack of thunder sounded, and we slipped inside as a colorful swarm of beachgoers across the street packed up and headed to their cars.

  A chill washed over me upon entering the air-conditioned apartment and I rubbed my bare arms. “I can fix us some sandwiches before we head out.”

  He was staring at me again, and I felt the tension crackle in the air. A bolt of lightning flashed over the sky. “Why do you do that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “You know . . . get all intense on me.”

  “I was thinking that it wasn’t weird . . . talking about Allison with you. And that I’m enjoying this.” He patted the genealogy book on the island of the kitchen, left his hand there.

  I gulped in a breath. “I’m glad you can talk about her with me. No matter how things were when she died, she was a part of you. An important part from the sound of it.” I stared at his hand, still on the genealogy book. “I’ve felt guilty leaving the way I did before, but knowing all you had to go through—her death, the broken legs, and that I didn’t know, that I wasn’t there to help you through it . . . I think I feel most guilty about that.” I stepped closer, placed my hand on his, even as I wondered if it
were the wisest decision, this initiation. But I wanted him to see my heart. To understand. Not to hate me for what I’d done. “I am sorry, Ethan. If I could do it all over again, I would do it differently.”

  “How so?”

  This was foreign territory—this wearing your heart on your sleeve type of stuff. Ethan had changed. But of course he had. Going through whatever he had with Allison, it seemed to have made him more vulnerable. I wasn’t sure I was a fan.

  But I’d changed too. If anything I’d grown harder, more relentless in pursuing what I thought would make me happy, what I thought would give me purpose and identity beyond my broken family, my broken mother. And yet, in the six years since I’d left Massachusetts, I couldn’t really claim I was happier. More self-satisfied, more confident, maybe. But happy?

  What was happy anyway? Happy was working alongside my crew. Falling into bed exhausted from a grueling day at sea. Here, discovering bits and pieces of the tea chest history, discovering bits and pieces of Ethan again. But those things were all dependent on circumstances, on succeeding even, or on another person.

  I gathered a breath, forced myself to answer honestly. Standing here, before Ethan, I felt like a failure once again. I prided myself on being loyal to my crew—to near strangers who came together for a common goal. But what about this man whom I’d first given my heart to? How could I have ever been faithful to him while pursuing a military career? How would I do things differently if I could do them again?

  “I think I still would have left.”

  He turned his hand upward, our palms now touching, the gesture a thousand times more intimate than it had just been. “I would have understood, you know. I would have gotten it. I had dreams too. We could have chased them together. I only wish you had trusted me with them.”

  His calloused fingertips grazed the inside of my wrist, causing my heart to thud with steady beats. My senses heightened, every cell of my hand aware of his nearness, seeming to transport that wakefulness to the rest of my body.

  He stared at my lips, and I forced myself to concentrate on my words.