His fingertips brushed through the dust of a large antique chest, its brass fittings tarnished green. “What is in the chest?”
“Ah, that’s why I brought you up.Thisis my hope chest. My grandmother gave it to me, and my mom and I put stuff into it, all for my wedding day, and here we are.”
I knelt in front of it and lifted the lid. The cedar scent rose all around us. “I love that smell.”
Torin sat down on a footstool beside me and asked, “What is inside?”
“Lots of keepsakes, I know I just said that it was all for my wedding day and made it seem like I would just cart it all downstairs and begin using it. But Torin, you must know, I am very sentimental and it’s far more likely that I will look through it and put it all back, it’s just too…dearto me.”
I pulled a small stack of linens from the pile. And showed him the edges where ‘Sweet Dreams’ was embroidered and surrounded by flowers. “My grandmother stitched these. I might use them.” I put them in my lap and pulled out another piece of fabric, an aged scrap of veil. “This is from my grandmother’s wedding veil.” I picked up a small stack of linen napkins tied with a ribbon. “These were embroidered by my mother. And this…” I picked up a crocheted doily. “Was made by my great grandmother, making it near a hundred years old.”
Then there were padded china boxes, one that held small dessert plates and one with tea cups. I unzipped them to show Torin.
“Och, they are verra fine.”
“Also, this one has crystal wine glasses.” I opened it and we peeked in. “I honestly should use this stuff, put it downstairs, but I can’t bear it. I have my grandmother’s china down there, but this is mygreat-grandmother’s, it’s even more precious.”
Then there were some wax papers, an envelope with pressed flowers and a ribbon that looked ancient and faded. “These came from my grandmother’s wedding bouquet.”
“Och, ye ought tae hae had flowers.”
“True, but that’s fine, it’s okay, our wedding was perfect.” I pulled out a few more pressed flowers from various moments, then a box full of roses. “These are dried flowers from my…” My voice staggered. “My parents’ funeral.” I tilted the lid to let him smell.
“Sometimes I think this might break my heart, but showing you helps. It will be nice to have someone to talk to about it.”
He said, “Ye want tae talk about it?”
“Nope.”
I took another deep breath. “We’re getting to the bottom now.” There was a stack of recipe cards tied with a string. One smudged with flour was for a wedding cake. There were two framed photos, one of my parents on their wedding day, and one of my grandparents on theirs. I showed them both to Torin. “This is a paintin’?”
“It’s called a photo, an exact likeness taken on that day. I’ll show you, we’ll take a photo of ourselves. You’ll see.”
He was looking down on them.
I asked, “Do you think they look like me?”
He chewed his lip. “I daena see much likeness, but then I ken there wouldna be.”
“Yeah.” I took the photos and looked down on them. “My whole life I wondered why I didn’t look like them much.”
I took out the two books at the bottom of the chest, a Bible and a prayer book. They looked well-worn and from a long ago time.
“These belonged to my great-grandmother. The Bible is a family Bible. The prayerbook is in Latin, I can’t read it.”
I passed the books to him and he began thumbing through them.
Dude, seeing the pile of fabric, put out a tentative paw to climb on it. “Dude, no, this is vintage and there will be no cat butt on it.”
He gave me a look and pulled the paw back. Then he sat licking that paw as if I had hurt his feelings.
I looked down in the chest. “You know, one of the weird things is I remember the inside of this chest differently.”
Torin’s brow drew down. “Ye do?”
I nodded. “I think it was just plain wood, you know, and now there’s this paper on the inside... I feel like I never noticed that before.”
I touched a bit of the paper that was peeled up in the small corner. “But it looks so old, like the paper has been here for decades, I don’t know when we did that.” I chewed my lip. “I must be misremembering. I just...”
