The Tea Chest

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  I was halfway to my car when Lena called out to me. “Thank you for coming. Baby.”

  I turned, looked at Lena’s outstretched hand, her bare feet on the stoop, one hand against the screen of the storm door, probably ripping it further. She looked so pitiful there, and for a moment I tried to picture how she felt. Not hearing from her daughter for six years, then having her show up without an apology, running off again within minutes. She probably wondered if it would be another six years before she heard from me.

  I smiled enough to let her know it wouldn’t be. As far as that apology . . . well, hopefully she wouldn’t hold her breath for that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Hayley

  “AND HOW WAS SHE?”

  I shrugged, didn’t make a move to leave the passenger seat of Ethan’s car though we’d just parked on Governors Avenue near the Medford Historical Society. “She was . . . good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I mean, not totally together of course, but her house was nothing like I remember it being. It was . . . clean. And she said that she was too. I kind of believe her.”

  “Wow. That’s great.” I felt that intense gaze again. “That’s great, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Of course. I guess I’m just a little gun-shy.”

  “It’s good that you went there, you know? I’m proud of you.”

  Why did I not feel proud of myself? I’d done what I’d come to do, and yet I ended up feeling emptier for it.

  Ethan tapped his thumb against the steering wheel. “Did she know anything about your family?”

  “She knew the name of my great-grandfather. Jed called me last night, asking if I found out anything. He offered to look into it for me. I took him up on it.”

  “The guy’s into this stuff. And who knows? Maybe he’ll find you are actually related to Michael Ashworth. And to Noah Winslow. And I guess, very distantly, to him and Melissa and little Wyatt.”

  I didn’t want to get my hopes up. It was no secret I wasn’t proud of what little family legacy Lena left to me. To find out I had a rich family heritage—one dating to the founding of our country, one that included a man who had risked not only his life, but his reputation for the sake of freedom—stirred to life something small and hopeful within me. Thinking I could be related to someone like Melissa and the adorable Wyatt . . . well, it was simply more than Lena had ever been able to give.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  We sat in silence for a moment before he took the keys out of the ignition. “Ready?”

  I nodded, slid from the seat while Ethan grabbed the photocopies Jed had given us along with the photocopy of Noah’s oath.

  We walked down the hill to the historical society, pulled open one of the big wooden doors. A set of carpeted stairs lay in front of us, and we climbed them to the foyer.

  “Hello!” an older man called from where he dusted an antique chair to the left, up the short flight of stairs. “How can I help you folks today?”

  Ethan strode up the stairs, held out his hand, and once again introduced us to a stranger we hoped would be able to help us. I joined him at the top of the stairs, peered into a spacious room with plentiful windows and various displays to the left. A large painting of a woman took up a spot to the right, along with some antique swords.

  Ethan explained our entire journey, beginning with the oath in the chest, all while the man listened intently. When Ethan finished, the man, whose name was Gerald, touched the photocopy with a sort of reverence, studied it carefully.

  “I can hardly believe it.”

  “We couldn’t either, at first, but we brought it to an appraiser. It appears to be authentic. We only wish we knew the story behind it.”

  “I may be able to help with that.” He turned and walked quickly to the back of the spacious room, obviously excited.

  We followed the man’s wobbly steps. Wobbly, but filled with enthusiasm. I squeezed Ethan’s arm, couldn’t deny my own excitement.

  Gerald led us across the wood floor to a display of various writings and pictures in a glass display case. He pointed to a picture of a broken stairwell on the left side of the case, just above an old teacup without handles, its blue pattern smudged with age. “This house dated back to the Revolution. It was just north of Cradock Bridge. They did a major renovation last year, completely tore out the original stairs, and found these.” He gestured to the documents behind the glass. “Revolutionary writings of Emma Winslow, Noah Winslow’s wife. I’ve studied them many times, wondered at the missing pieces . . . and now it seems some of them have been found.”

  I stepped closer, put my hand to the glass where the first paper lay. That the answers to our questions could be so close seemed incomprehensible. Beside Emma’s journal entry was a familiar-looking cartoon. The caption read, An artist’s depiction of the tarring and feathering of loyalist John Malcolm in Boston. (The Granger Collection, NYC).

  It pictured five angry-looking colonial men surrounding a gray-haired, feathered man. They yanked his head back with a rope tied about his neck, shoved a kettle labeled tea down his throat. Two streams of liquid squirted from his mouth, mirroring those in the background, tea chests being dumped from a boat. Also in the background stood the Liberty Tree, a hangman’s noose upon it.

  I read the first line of the journal with some trouble, the script in cursive and a bit faded.

  Gerald opened the case for me, and I leaned closer.

  I’ve nowhere else to turn, and so I turn to a blank page, where lies the only hope for a promising future. One day soon, I will have to lay these musings aside. One day soon, when I become his wife.

  I stepped back, my mind already full of questions. Was she nervous because of what Reverend Osgood had hinted at in his entries? Was Noah a no-good, lousy drunk?

  It saddened me to think a man despised by his own wife might be behind the tea chest, behind my own family perhaps. And yet that was life, was it not? Allowing hope, bracing for disappointment. Rinse and repeat.

  Ethan stepped beside me. “This is amazing.” He turned toward Gerald. “Is it okay if we stay here a bit, try to read through this?”

  His smile seemed to take on the look of a teacher who had answers he couldn’t wait for his students to discover. “We’re open until four. But this is just part of the entries. The rest are upstairs.”

  “Thank you so much. We’ll start with these,” I said. “I’m also wondering about Sarah Fulton. I read she was a spy. Do you have any record of that?”

  His smile broadened. “We do. Though I suggest you begin with Emma Winslow’s journals first.” He returned to his desk.

  Ethan placed the photocopies on a nearby glass display of an old quilt. “We’re finally about to get some answers.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Finally? Seems this fell into our laps pretty quickly if you ask me.”

  “That’s just because you always expect things to be difficult.”

  “Things are always difficult.”

  “I think you like them that way.”

  I didn’t want to argue, or rather delve into some sort of psychology debate, so I simply shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Maybe I did like them that way. Less expectation, more work. But when the good things happened, I knew I’d earned them. And when they didn’t happen, well, maybe I just hadn’t worked hard enough.

  But at least they were within my control.

  I thought of the training that would await me in California in just over a week.

  I’d worked hard. I’d come back to Massachusetts to see Lena, find some sort of closure. Surely that would equate to success.

  Yet finding the story behind the tea chest was something thoroughly out of my control, and it seemed the answers had fallen in place. Maybe Ethan was right. Maybe things didn’t always have to be difficult.

  “I pray the Lord works out good in the midst of darkness.”

  I wondered if this—the getting without the deserving, the good in the midst of darkness
—was the sort of thing I longed after, maybe even the answer to some of my emotional hang-ups. What would it be like to let go? To trust in something besides my own ability?

  Ethan and I stood side by side, working out the words together, forming them into sentences beneath squinting eyes, slowly coming up with a picture of Emma’s life. Emma Malcolm, if we were to be accurate. Boston resident. Daughter of a hated customs official. Soon-to-be wife of a man she did not love.

  We read with rapt attention of her friendship with Sarah Fulton, of her role in the Tea Party. Straining to rush forward, to connect the pieces, we were forced to put up with the slow pace the antique reading demanded.

  Still, we formed a picture. A picture of a marriage proposal on the eve of the Tea Party. Excited young love. Rebellion, and the pressing question of what to give one’s devotion to—liberty or loyalty. The all-too-familiar oath.

  When we’d reached the end, we stepped away, rubbed our eyes. We’d been at it an hour, each word a struggle but with a reward waiting. And now this—a beautiful discovery.

  I felt something around my heart crumble. A guard of sorts. Looking here at this old document that Emma Winslow had left behind, knowing how we would find the chest she spoke of years later . . . I felt I was suspended in some sort of in-between place. Here, with Ethan, trying to solve an ancient mystery. And yet very much hundreds of years away with Emma, in despair over her future.

  Liberty or loyalty.

  I’d chosen liberty.

  I longed for Emma to choose it also. To flee from the family that smothered her, stunted her growth, as I had. To leave behind the unpleasant and think what was best for herself. To serve her country how she could. In this desire, I felt bound to her.

  “But she married Noah. This isn’t the end.” I felt light-headed from the squinting, from the emotional exertion of the journey. I dug in my bag for the two water bottles I’d packed, handed one to Ethan, and twisted the cap off the other.

  “You sure you want to keep going?”

  “I can go upstairs and work on it for a while if you want to look around some, take a break.” I knew my tone held a challenge, and I remembered the runs Ethan and I used to go on together, thought how it might be fun to do so again.

  “You’re crazy, Ashworth.” He put the cap back on his water bottle. “I only asked for your sake.”

  I hit him lightly on the arm, knew we were flirting. Here, in this building of secrets—secrets that were fast becoming personal at the same time that they were becoming so much bigger than us—it seemed that anything was possible. Anything . . . maybe even me and Ethan.

  My chest warmed at the thought. This wasn’t in my plans. There was no room for a man, especially a civilian man, in my life. Especially this civilian man. I would go on to California, I would become a SEAL. I would bask in the comfort of strictly regimented days, in the purpose and calling of a military life, a military family—my real family—and there, I would be far away from Lena and Ethan and tea chests and everything that caused me to do the one thing I hated to do.

  Feel.

  Foreign tears pricked the backs of my eyes. They taunted me, calling out my weakness, and I hated them. I stepped toward the glass, chose to focus on Emma instead of my petty problems.

  Gerald came back into the room. “How’s it coming?” he asked.

  “I think we’re finished over here. Would it be okay if we had a look upstairs?”

  He waved his arm toward the stairs. “It’s already set out on the table for you. If you wouldn’t mind washing your hands first in the bathroom over there, you can get started. The oils on our fingers are known to damage old documents.”

  We both washed thoroughly, then followed him up a winding staircase to a single dark room, two tiny windows letting in scant sunlight. A lamp sat on the table, along with a small manila file folder, open with a stack of creased, brittle papers like the ones we’d read in the display case downstairs.

  “You’re free to look at them all. Just treat them with care, of course. We want them around for a good long while.” He winked at us.

  We thanked Gerald and sat at the table, our arms pressed against one another in the small space.

  We turned our attention to the pages, the top one seeming to pick up where the last one in the display case left off.

  We read.

  Emma wrote of the morning after the Tea Party, waking in the Fulton house but hoping to destroy the evidence of treason. She wrote of going down to the beach, seeing a tea chest in the waters . . .

  The tea chest?

  And now I will depart from the truth of my history. Now I will tell the story I wish were my ending instead of the one that must be. Had Samuel not found me that morning, had he not found Noah’s oath, all would be different. And here I will allow it to play out in my mind—mayhap only a foolish girl’s fantasies, but dear to me all the same.

  If Samuel had not found me that morning, I would never have returned to Father’s house. I would not be here now, writing these pages, desperate for a second chance. I would have gone to the Fultons’ that morning, helped Sarah make breakfast, greeted Noah at the end of the day . . .

  The entries went on. A story. A wedding, children, a genteel correspondence with somewhat-estranged parents. It was sweet, but it lacked authenticity, and even if she hadn’t said as much, I would have been able to tell that this was not Emma’s real story. It seemed to fizzle out until it changed drastically with one sentence.

  All this time I have sought to comfort myself with this story, resigning myself to the fate of my future. Yet Providence has smiled upon me, even at the ill-fated mistreatment of my father. The town is mad, it seems, and still Father provoked without mercy. Still, I fear the image of his tarred, naked body will be forever branded upon my mind. ’Twas too cruel. Too inhuman an act. But ’twas just such an act that sent Samuel away. ’Twas just such an act that caused him to leave in haste. ’Twas the Lord who led me to the spot where he’d hidden Noah’s oath. I have sent a letter to Noah. Meanwhile, I hold out hope . . .

  I fended off a sudden chill by rubbing my arms with my hands. I had never quite thought of all the drama surrounding the birth of our country. To me, it had always sounded glorious and worthy, but here, reading of Emma’s father, seeing the picture of men who claimed to stand for liberty mistreating a man, I wondered. There was so much left untold, it seemed.

  “Wait.” I left the table to go back downstairs, Ethan following. We went to the display case, to the painting of the feathered man. “She’s the daughter of this man.” I pointed to the picture. “John Malcolm.”

  Ethan’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “She was definitely caught in the middle.” We studied the painting another minute before going back up the stairs. The society lay quiet, and I wondered briefly where Gerald had gone before we sat down and continued our deciphering.

  As Father lies suffering in the parlor, calling out curses upon me, seeming to blame me for his troubles, a small part of me can’t help but wonder if my disloyalty has indeed brought about these circumstances. What those men did was not right, and yet neither were Father’s actions. Both proceed in the name of liberty, though I do not see that either one promotes freedom. I cannot help but think of Noah. His honor and goodness. I miss him.

  “She really did love him, then. And it appears his alcohol problem came later, maybe after he was wounded at Bunker Hill.”

  Footsteps came up the stairs, and I slipped my phone from my pocket—4:32. We’d already overstayed our welcome.

  “How is your reading coming along?” Gerald asked.

  Ethan nodded. “Fascinating, but I’m afraid we could be here for hours more before we finish. Forgive us. We lost track of time.”

  “I can be here tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “Thank you so much, Gerald. We appreciate that.” I looked at the papers again, Emma’s now-familiar writing within reach. “Could we take some pictures?”

  “As long as they are not post
ed publicly, you certainly may.”

  I snapped a series of pictures of the next several pages of Emma’s journal, hoping we could see the words well enough to continue deciphering them. We thanked Gerald, gathered our things, and headed to the car. The sun began its descent, blocked by the large hill to the west, but hours of summer light would still be ours. I thought of Melissa and Wyatt, of the tea chest stored in one of the houses at the top of that hill for all these years.

  “You up for more?” Ethan asked.

  I looked at him, my heart aching in an unfamiliar way.

  I would leave soon.

  We would continue our adventure, hopefully find the rest of Emma’s story . . . and then? I would go to California. To my dreams. To the schedule and structure and routine and hard work I loved. I supposed Ethan and I could keep in touch. But it wouldn’t be the same. I felt the press and crunch of time closing upon us. This mystery, this discovery of the past, together.

  Perhaps there was more to life than personal ambition and proving one’s strength and capability. I’d thought those were the things that made me alive, but looking into Ethan’s now-familiar gaze, the sun highlighting specks of blond in his hair as he held the car door open for me, I wondered if there wasn’t more—much, much more to be had from life.

  I smiled. “I’m definitely ready for more.”

  And that thought alone scared me more than anything else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Hayley

  WE HADN’T TAKEN enough pictures. I looked across the table of my apartment to where Ethan sat. Outside, night had long ago enveloped the patio, and when a chill had swept in off the beach, we’d come inside to finish working on the pictures we’d taken at the historical society.

  Work on our phones was tedious, and Ethan had gone to get his laptop to put the pictures on some time ago. Still, they’d been so much clearer in person.

  And now, we’d read of Noah leaving for Bunker Hill, of Emma serving bravely alongside Sarah Fulton to help the wounded men, of Noah’s injury, his struggle with drink.