The Silver Suitcase

by Terrie Todd

  “My name’s Teeny Webber. I’m almost eight and I like helping my mom cook food.”

  When Randy Murphy’s turn came, he stood and looked around the room. “Uh . . . yeah, like you already know, I’m Mister Murphy. I’m 124 years old and I like catching leprechauns and tying their beards together just to watch ’em wrestle.”

  This, of course, triggered a burst of laughter throughout the entire room.

  “So.” Cornelia smiled. “It seems we have a centenarian in our midst.” The children laughed again. “Do you know what that word means?” She turned and wrote the word on the chalkboard.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Murphy. At recess time, you will stay in and look up this word. You’ll write the definition on the board, and when you’re done you may be excused to go outside with the others.”

  “Sure, I can do that in a minute.” Randy’s changing voice cracked on the word minute, and the others laughed again.

  “Furthermore,” Cornelia continued, “if you can bring me one of those leprechauns before the weekend, I’ll believe you. If you can’t, I will expect a one-page report on the history of St. Patrick’s Day on my desk by Monday.”

  A chorus of ooooohs waved across the room as Randy took his seat. On his way down, he punched the elbow of his nearest neighbor, Allan Black. Allan was the only student with no siblings in the room. He stood.

  “My name is Allan Black and I’m thirteen. My favorite thing in the summer is fishing, but my dad won’t let me go anymore.” He scratched his arm self-consciously and sat. Cornelia wondered what the boy might have done to lose fishing privileges, but thought better of asking.

  Only one child hadn’t introduced herself—the shy little Murphy girl who had held so tightly to her sister’s hand earlier. Cornelia approached her and got down to her eye level.

  “And what is your name, Miss Murphy?”

  No response. Cornelia saw only the top of her head; a crooked part separating two red braids that looked like an older sister had hastily created them.

  “Do you have a name?” Cornelia asked.

  The red braids bobbed.

  “Can you say it?”

  The faintest of whispers came from somewhere below the red tresses, but Cornelia couldn’t make out what the voice said. The girl’s sister, Brenda, spoke up.

  “Her name’s Ivy.”

  “Hello, Ivy,” Cornelia said. “Are you six years old?”

  The braids bobbed again.

  “She don’t talk,” Randy Murphy stated from the back of the room.

  Cornelia looked up. “Doesn’t. And I bet she can speak quite nicely, can’t you, Ivy? All you need is a little courage, and I happen to have some extra courage in my desk. I’ll get it for you at recess.”

  That’s when Cornelia saw the edge of a puddle on Ivy’s seat, where it had begun to form beneath her. It was slowly beginning to drip to the floor.

  “You are dismissed for recess,” Cornelia announced to the class. Then she quietly pulled Brenda Murphy aside.

  “It seems Ivy needs some assistance. Can you help me with her?”

  While Randy busied himself at the large dictionary on the corner table and the others went out for a round of dodgeball, Brenda and Cornelia cleaned Ivy up as best they could under the circumstances. To her credit, the little girl didn’t cry.

  She didn’t speak, either. Once they’d finished, Cornelia took her by the hand and led her to the big teacher’s desk.

  “Remember how I told you I keep some extra courage in my desk?” she said.

  Ivy nodded.

  Cornelia leaned in and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “I needed some this morning, because I felt nervous about teaching all these children for the first time. Lucky for me, I have a good supply right here in this drawer. Go ahead and pull it open.”

  The little girl looked up to make sure she’d heard correctly. When Cornelia nodded, Ivy slowly pulled on the handle and opened the drawer a few inches.

  “See that little tin?” Cornelia said. “Go ahead and take it out.”

  Cornelia sat in her own chair at the desk and took the small, colorful tin from Ivy. “Whenever I need a little courage, I sprinkle a little of this on my head, and it makes me very brave. I’ve been very brave today, don’t you think?”

  Ivy nodded again.

  Cornelia opened the tin and the girl looked inside. Then she looked up at Cornelia, confused.

  “Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You think it’s empty, don’t you?”

  More nods.

  “That’s because I forgot to tell you this special courage dust is invisible. You can’t see it, and you can’t feel it, either. But it only takes a little, like this.”

  She put her fingers into the tin and sprinkled the invisible contents over Ivy’s head and hands. “See? Just like that. It might not work immediately, but mark my words. You’ll feel braver and braver as the day goes by.”

  A hint of a smile played at the corner of Ivy’s lips. Cornelia couldn’t help but think of her own tiny daughter, now sixteen months old. Walking, no doubt. Perhaps beginning to speak, too. Was anyone encouraging her to express herself?

  “Now, let’s close the tin and put it away before anybody else finds out our secret, okay?”

  Ivy nodded and obeyed.

  Cornelia looked up to see Randy Murphy watching from where he stood at the blackboard, chalk in hand. She took Ivy’s tiny hand and led her out to the playground, where she supervised another ten minutes of energetic play before ringing the bell again.

  This would be one interesting year.

  CHAPTER 39

  August 2007

  On Monday, Schneiders’ Grocery remained closed while Ken and Benita spent their time at the police station and at their insurance agent’s office, filling out forms. It had been a sleepless night, even for the children. Though their rooms were untouched, and Benita had tucked them into bed with prayers and stories and tried to keep their routine as close to normal as she could, they naturally felt traumatized by the violation of their home.

  The police dusted for fingerprints and collected Benita’s initial list of missing items. Ken had stayed up late nailing boards over the broken window and rigging a makeshift lock on the door. The two of them had finally collapsed into bed around three o’clock, but no sleep followed. Every little sound, inside or out, was cause for alarm.

  When she finally did doze off, Benita dreamed of strangers carrying away her children, and she awoke with her heart pounding. Whenever she allowed herself to think about the silver suitcase, she was unable to hold back the tears.

  Now she was filling out still more forms and trying to assess the value of the electronics taken from their home. Benita was thankful that Ken had faithfully backed up important documents from the missing computers. The external hard drives lay safe in a file cabinet.

  When it came time to assign a dollar value to the silver suitcase and its contents, she had no idea what to write. As an antique, it might possibly hold a small value, but for other reasons it was priceless. She decided to put it in the special column titled Sentimental Items.

  Once they had filed all the necessary forms with the police and the insurance company, they returned to the store to begin the cleanup. Two workers from the glass company pulled up in front of the store at the same time as Ken and Benita. Ken put them to work fixing the window while Benita restacked the fallen canned goods and mopped up soda pop. Katie-Lynn and James helped, and while they worked, Benita said a silent prayer. God, help me somehow to turn this awful experience into a valuable life lesson for the kids. Make something good out of this.

  “The guys who did this should have to clean it up,” Katie-Lynn grumbled, dipping her rag into the bucket of hot soapy water she was using to scrub shelves.

  “You’re right, sweetie, they should,” Benita sai
d. “That would be a lot more fair, wouldn’t it?

  “Yes!”

  “Do you suppose they will?” Benita’s test question hung in the air for a moment.

  “Well, if the police catch them, won’t they make the bad guys come back here and clean up?” James said.

  Benita stopped to look at her son. “I don’t know. I suppose they might. But they may not catch them. Or it could take a long time . . . months, or even years. Meanwhile, the store would have to stay closed, our customers couldn’t buy what they need, and we’d have no income and no way to pay our bills. Do you think it would be wise for us to just sit here and wait for them to come back and clean up?”

  “I guess not,” Katie-Lynn admitted. “It would end up costing a whole lot more.”

  “That’s right. And fair or not, life is like that. People do things that hurt us. Sometimes they come back and make things right. But more often, they don’t. The choice is ours. We can sit there and say ‘I didn’t make this mess and I’m not going to clean it up’ and continue to live in the mess. Or we can do what we need to do to clean it up.”

  “Like if someone hurts your feelings?” Katie-Lynn said.

  “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  Benita wished she could practice what she preached. In counseling, Phillip had helped her understand how much her father had hurt her by his abandonment, even though she had no relationship with him. She’d projected her pain onto her husband, which only pushed his pain buttons and kept the conflict spiraling.

  James looked at the boarded windows. “But what if you don’t know how to clean it up?”

  “Sometimes that means hiring professional help, like those window guys and the locksmith. They can see the problem and they have the right tools and skills to fix it.”

  “Is that why you visit Phillip?” Katie-Lynn asked. Benita had explained to the kids that she was getting help with sorting through some struggles.

  “Yes. He has tools to help me,” Benita said. “After this little adventure, I suspect it would be a good thing for us all to talk to someone like Phillip.”

  “I hope you’re not including me,” Ken said from the next aisle.

  Benita hadn’t been aware that Ken was listening. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea?”

  “And who will mind the store if we all go traipsing off to see the shrink? Has it not occurred to you this wouldn’t have happened if we’d been here?”

  Benita looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Ken, we can’t be here twenty-four-seven!”

  “Listen, I took your advice and started closing the store and spending more time with the family. Look where it got us.” Ken tossed a screwdriver into his toolbox and closed the lid. “I won’t let this happen again.”

  “How do you know the thieves wouldn’t have come anyway, while we were here, and hurt one of us?” Benita studied her husband’s face. “Here I’ve been thanking God we were gone when they came, that we’re all safe—and you’re blaming yourself for not being here!”

  “I’m not blaming myself. I’m blaming you.”

  Benita couldn’t believe what she’d heard.

  “You and the kids can go talk to your precious Phillip if you must, but somebody has to stay grounded in real life.” Ken picked up his toolbox and walked out the back door, leaving Benita and the children standing as mute as statues.

  By the end of the week, they had reopened the store. Customers were quick to commiserate with them and some even bought a little extra as an expression of support and empathy.

  Benita acquired a replacement computer and created posters for the lost suitcase. She found a photo online of an identical one, and even offered a reward. On the bottom of the poster, in fine print, appeared these words: This suitcase contains the handwritten diaries of Cornelia Faith Simpson, dating back to 1934.

  Benita and the children went around the neighborhood posting the signs wherever they could. They dropped them off at police stations, pawnshops, recycling depots, and schools. Who knew where it might turn up?

  Phillip allowed them to hang one in the waiting room at his counseling office. She and the children spent an hour telling him how the break-in had made them feel violated, disillusioned, and unsafe. Phillip asked about the silver suitcase, and Benita told him that she’d inherited it from the grandmother she loved and missed so much.

  “What’s really hard is I never finished reading the diaries. I learned so much about her life, so many things I never knew. I guess it felt like sort of a lifeline for me.”

  “Can you talk about that? How was it a lifeline?” Phillip prompted.

  “Gram’s faith inspired me to start going back to church and discover God for myself. She lost her mother early, but she had a sweet relationship with her father, which was something I never had with mine.”

  Benita nervously tapped the arm of her chair. “Gram went through some really hard things, yet I never saw any sign of bitterness in her, only faith and joy. I want to know her secret. I don’t want to end up a bitter old woman, but sometimes I’m afraid I will—even without facing the kinds of loss my grandmother did.”

  With the children there, she didn’t talk about her contempt for Ken or the accusations he had dumped on her. She sat quietly while Phillip asked the children questions and they answered in their childlike fashion.

  “Sometimes,” Phillip told them, “when bad things happen to us, we might think it’s our fault somehow. If you ever feel like that, you need to know it’s not true. In no way is the break-in your fault. You could not have prevented it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  James and Katie-Lynn nodded their heads solemnly, but tears trickled down Benita’s cheeks. She suspected Phillip’s words were directed toward her. She hadn’t told him how guilty Ken’s words had made her feel. How did he know?

  “And if anyone tries to make you feel like it is your fault, it might be because that person feels guilty for not being able to prevent it, and wants to put the blame on somebody else.”

  “I know it’s not our fault.” Katie-Lynn twirled a brown braid around her finger. “Mom says we should just be thankful we’re all okay.”

  Phillip nodded. “That’s right. That’s the main thing, isn’t it?”

  Two weeks later, summer break officially ended. Ken had focused fully on the store since the break-in. Although no physical evidence of the event remained—other than the absence of the silver suitcase—emotional tension charged the air more than ever. Ken’s workaholic tendencies had kicked back in, and he’d taken his behavior to a completely new level. He rose by five every morning and was downstairs by six, poring over spreadsheets or prices online, rearranging stock, or talking on the phone with suppliers. He rarely returned to the apartment before midnight, except to eat, and often skipped that as well.

  “If that’s the way he wants to live, it’s his loss,” Benita told Phillip on her next visit, when she had the chance to talk to him alone. “But what really bothers me is that he expects me—and even the kids, to some degree—to live the same way. He tries to make me feel guilty for not working as long and hard as he does.”

  “Do you?”

  “Do I feel guilty?”

  Phillip nodded.

  “Well, yes . . . sometimes. I feel guilty for coming here, actually. I feel guilty for taking time to go for a haircut or even to church.”

  “What else do you feel?”

  “Mostly I’m ticked off,” Benita admitted. “James joined a soccer team, which I’m thrilled about. He plays his first game next week and I know Ken won’t go.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “It’s during store hours. I’m not sure he’s left the premises since the break-in, except to file reports with the police and insurance company.”

  “Would he go watch James play soccer if you offered to stay at the store?�
�

  Benita thought about that.

  “Possibly. But I don’t want to miss James’s game.”

  “Would you be willing to make that sacrifice?”

  Benita scowled. “That’s so unfair.” Even as she said it, she heard Katie-Lynn using the exact words . . . and recalled her own answer. “But . . . yes. I suppose I could. Right now it’s more important for James to know his dad cares . . . and maybe if Ken went to watch, he’d realize what he’s missing.” Benita fiddled with the edge of her skirt as she watched Phillip write on his notepad.

  “And if all is well at the store when he returns, maybe he could lose some of his anxiety about leaving it,” Phillip suggested, tucking his notepad into a file folder that displayed Benita’s name across the top.

  “Maybe.”

  “Think about it. You can at least make the offer and see where it lands.”

  CHAPTER 40

  December 1941

  As Christmas approached, Cornelia threw herself into preparations for the annual pageant the school board insisted be held, regardless of the chaos reported in world news.

  On December eighth, the United States had joined the war, the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, an attack that killed more than twenty-four hundred Americans. Three days later, Cornelia quietly remembered the anniversary of Henry’s death by going to their special spot at Rocky Creek. This year was much colder, however, and she stayed only minutes before returning to her father’s truck and driving home. So much had happened in two years.

  Glad to have a distraction from her own memories and from all the fears surrounding them, Cornelia had put together a simple play for the children to perform. Much to her relief, one of the mothers, Mrs. Rippley, volunteered to come to the school three times a week and help the students form a choir. They prepared three Christmas carols for the children to perform and three more that would include audience participation. Mrs. Rippley’s daughter, Rose, accompanied the children on the accordion. This gifted girl was in grade eight, and on the second day of school, she had volunteered to lead the singing of “O Canada” every morning and “God Save the King” at the end of the day. Cornelia had gladly surrendered the duty.