The Tea Chest

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  He grinned, a dent in his cheek created beneath my fingers. “Though it may make me a weak man, I think I should care for you despite your politics, Emma. But I am gladdened to have you on the side of freedom.”

  I continued spreading the black substance along his whiskered chin, the manly stubble foreign and appealing all at once. He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed beneath the smooth skin of his neck.

  “Emma, I know this may be neither the time nor the place, but I want you to know that John is not the only one who will vouch for you.” His voice was low enough to conceal his words from Sarah and John, and my heart threatened to gallop away at their sincerity, their implications. “Me . . . what I mean is, I wish to vouch for you. I—I wish to protect you . . . to love you forever even, if I may be so bold.”

  I exhaled a shaky breath, my soul taking flight. “I—I don’t know what to say.” Or perhaps I did. I wished to shout from the top of the Fulton roof that I loved him also, that I had never been happier to hear words from one’s mouth. That in this instant nothing else mattered—not Father’s disowning me or that I didn’t have a true home or family to call my own or taking part in the most dangerous thing I’d ever done this very night: committing treason.

  “You needn’t say anything. My timing could not be worse. I much prefer the press, where I labor over my words for hours. Here, I cannot tame them near as well.”

  I shook my head fiercely, the lampblack now forgotten. I could not let him think himself foolish, could not let him regret those bonny words. “I feel the same,” I said, my voice hoarse with emotion.

  His eyes lit up from within the blackness of his face. “Truly?”

  “Aye, though I’ve nothing now that I’ve left my family. No dowry, no meaning to my name—”

  “I would love that you take mine. As for a dowry, I feel I would be the richest man in all of Boston if you were to be my wife.” He reached his hand out where it brushed my dress, and my heart drummed beneath my corset. Was I not just lamenting that I had no family? And now the Lord had provided me a husband—the man of my heart. Not a family I’d been born into, nor a family that took pity on me, but a new one, begun from a love that had naught to do with financial gain or power or pity, but something greater.

  Noah’s fingers found mine, and he brought my hand to his lips, pressing his mouth to the pale veins on the back of my hand. When he drew away, a smudge of black from his face stained my hand.

  I laughed, nodding, fought a swell of tears.

  “Is that a yes?”

  I nodded again, and Noah stood, picked me up and swung me around, planted a kiss on my brow.

  I looked at John and Sarah, not without a little embarrassment. John nudged his wife. “It looks like they are having a wee bit more fun with their costume than we are, dear.”

  Sarah smiled, her eyes dancing between the two of us. “Well, you couldn’t have picked a poorer night for the two of you to realize what John and I have known for some time.”

  Noah and I exchanged a glance, and I shook my head, leaving his arms, and picked up the lampblack again. “She’s right. We can speak of our future later. The business at hand is more important.”

  Noah dropped his arms, but not before leaning toward my ear. “Nothing is more important than our future together, Emma. But what I do this night is for a better future. For us and for the generations after us.”

  Pleasant heat climbed my neck. To think of being Noah’s wife . . . to think of bearing his children, of having a family. One filled with love and warmth—not the cold, lifeless one that masked itself in control, like the one I had known all my life.

  I worked quickly to finish Noah’s disguise, adding some red ocher to his face and catching his gaze all too often, sharing one too many smiles for such an otherwise-grave night.

  After his hair was slicked back and both John’s and Noah’s clothing was wrapped in an assortment of shawls and blankets, Sarah and I admired our handiwork.

  “I would not know you if I passed you on the street,” Sarah said.

  I agreed. If the children came down, they would be scared witless.

  John grabbed his hatchet by the door. “We will wait for the signal outside Old South. Certainly Rotch will arrive soon.”

  “We will speak later tonight, aye?” Noah looked at me from where he stood, merriment in his blackened features.

  And then they were gone.

  Sarah and I cleaned up the lampblack along with any traces that we’d been disguising Mohawks. Then she brushed her hands on her apron. “I think I shall go for a stroll and have the older children watch the little ones. Do you care to join me?”

  I suppressed a nervous laugh, even as my stomach jumped at the thought of witnessing what the men were about to do. ’Twas dark out. Cold. We were without escorts. But the thrill of seeing what was about to take place stirred up something akin to courage in my chest.

  “I think ’tis a splendid idea.”

  The look of surprise on Sarah’s face, followed by approval, would be worth my fear that someone would recognize me this night.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hayley

  I SHIFTED FROM one foot to the other, concentrated on the weight distributing itself alongside my size-six foot. The twenty-six bones in the human foot withstand a lot, and yet most of us don’t give them the credit they’re due. We don’t focus on building the muscles around them, as with our arms; we just kind of take them for granted—that they will always be there to support us, to hold us up.

  Quite the opposite of how I felt about my mother.

  Now, on the cracked stoop of Lena’s house, staring at a wide rip in the screen of the storm door, I wondered what I would find within. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in six entire years, and for a fleeting moment I fought guilt over the texts and voice mails she’d left that I’d outright ignored. All the birthday messages, asking that I at least text her an address to send a gift. Now, I needed something from her—likely the only thing I would ever need—and here I was, on her doorstep.

  I pictured her opening the door, her eyes hollowed and bloodshot, her Happy Helpers uniform wrinkled and twisted, the buttons that were supposed to be down the middle off to the side. Did she still spend most of her paycheck on scratch tickets and heroin? Did she ever win anything on the tickets? Had she ever been infected by a dirty needle?

  I waited another moment, second-guessing my decision to come, feeling more than a little dizzy at the thought of actually seeing Lena. I knocked again, harder this time, swore under my breath, the hard word almost foreign to my ears of late. Why did I care? I looked at the ripped screen, felt a childlike urge to tear a bigger hole in it.

  The sound of a window sliding within its casing came to my right. A shock of gray hair appeared from a first-floor window of the apartment house beside Lena’s. “Miss Hayley, that you?”

  I couldn’t stop the grin that broke upon my face. “Mrs. Ray, how are you?” I leaned over the forsythia bush beneath the window to lift my hand to her own weathered one. Mrs. Ray was cookies and The Price Is Right, Lean Cuisines and soap operas—in short, the brightest part of my childhood.

  “Oh, you know, can’t complain. Well, I could, but it wouldn’t do any good. Look at you, all grown up. Your mom will sure be happy to see you.” She released my hand.

  I shrugged off her words or at least tried to. It wasn’t until then that I acknowledged the unspoken fear I’d held—the fear that Lena might not be here—like, here on this earth. The fear that she had OD’d, that Uncle Joe had been contacted but had been unable to respond or communicate the news to me while on a mission.

  And while I stayed away from Lena, I didn’t truly believe it was a forever thing. I hadn’t realized how much I depended on her to be there—if for no other reason than knowing we could reconcile one day. If I wanted to. On my terms.

  It would be just like Lena to up and die on me, to wreck my in-the-future plans of possible reconciliation.

  But ac
cording to our lifelong neighbor, my mother was alive.

  “I probably should have called first. She must be at work.”

  “Or Barbados.”

  “What?”

  “She and that fiancé of hers are on vacation. Barbados.”

  Barbados. Fiancé. You have got to be kidding me. All I could imagine was Lena and one of her sketchy boyfriends lying on a white-sand beach, congratulating themselves on some illegal drug deal they’d been involved in. How else did addicts wind up in Barbados?

  I rubbed my forehead. “Do you know when she’s expected back?”

  “Thursday. I’ve been getting her mail.”

  Three more days.

  So much for getting this task out of the way quick.

  I chatted with the elderly woman a few more minutes, vaguely filling her in on my time in the Navy. She was just as vague when I asked about Mom’s fiancé, waving a hand through the air. “Best to leave it to her to fill you in on all the details. You can come in and watch my stories with me if you want to.”

  “Thank you, but I better get going.” After we said good-bye, I walked to my rental car, drove away beneath Mrs. Ray’s watchful eye, frustration welling up inside me.

  Why did I even care about making amends with Lena? I’d tried. Like always, she wasn’t available—either physically or mentally. As I eased onto the highway back toward Revere, memories overtook me. The softball finals Lena had promised to make—how I’d hit a home run and searched the stands for her proud face. How she’d been, as always, absent. How many parent-teacher conferences had she missed, how many birthdays had she forgotten? By the time she made it to my high school graduation, it was too late; I’d given up on her, scorning the opportunity to have our picture taken together.

  She’d started building the wall a long time ago. All I did was make sure it stayed in place.

  The dashes on the highway blurred, shaming me. I blinked, hard. I thought of Lena in Barbados. I thought of Ethan pulling the small body of his just-rescued son into his arms. I wondered who he’d deemed worthy enough to wed, to have a child with, to fall in love with—not long after we’d parted ways from the looks of it, too. No doubt they had gone home from the hospital, the three of them, a family filled with gratitude.

  A family.

  Why, over and over again, did I think reconnecting with Lena would help me find fulfillment? I’d accepted long ago that the military was my family. That they were better at keeping their word and commitments than Lena had ever been. That they had taught me more of loyalty and faithfulness than eighteen years with a devotedly drug-addicted mother ever had.

  Why, then, had I returned to Massachusetts? Coming back here was a risk. I’d thought it had been worth it, but suddenly I wondered if I hadn’t been terribly, terribly wrong.

  I propped my feet up on the patio table beside my iced tea and the books I’d bought at Trident Booksellers that afternoon—A History of Boston in 50 Artifacts, an Images of America book that chronicled a walking tour of Boston, and a book titled Revolutionary Sites of Greater Boston. I’d distracted myself with the trip, contemplating between bookshelves whether to fly out early to California, settle in, and focus on completing my training before BUD/S.

  From some nearby grill, the scent of hamburgers found me. A breathtaking backdrop of oranges and reds streaked the sky, reflecting off the waters of Revere Beach, just across the street from the apartment rental I’d decided to splurge on that week. The salty air swept across the beach, where surfers were but black dots on the water, and made its way up to the deck, chasing away the humidity.

  Somewhere between classical literature and Revolutionary history, I’d rejected the idea of leaving Massachusetts. I’d come here for a reason, and whether or not I felt like abandoning ship, failure was not an option. I’d planned two weeks on the East Coast. A couple more days of waiting to see Lena—no matter how much I dreaded it—wouldn’t be the end of me. I would face BUD/S with no regrets. I would not fail. To think I’d let Barbados get in the way of my plans suddenly shamed me. How could I expect to be strong enough to complete BUD/S if I was ready to run at the first sign of discouragement?

  I stood from the table, feeling the need to release pent-up energy. In ten minutes, I was running on the beach just across the street. My sneakers made marks on the wet sand along the shore, and I ran the length of the beach as it emptied itself of people for the night.

  When I reached the rocks at the end, I turned and sprinted hard for three minutes before slowing back to a jog. The sea air fed my soul, as it always did, and the muck of the day cleared.

  The sun hovered just above the horizon and I slowed to a walk, the scratchy call of a seagull competing with the whistle of the wind.

  “Hayley!”

  My name didn’t register at first, or rather it sounded as if the seagull called it. But then it came again, clearer and sharper, from behind. I twisted, felt the salty air sticking to my sweaty skin, the breeze pushing damp strands of hair from my face.

  I recognized his form, unmistakable even after all this time. My mind raced back six summers earlier. The beach. A boy. Endless days of realizing I was falling in love. And then choosing to believe it a lie and abandoning both the love and the boy in the cruelest of ways.

  Something tight lurched within my chest as I thought of Ethan and his son on the same beach where we’d grown our young love. There was no room for regrets. Not now. I’d made my choice. I’d walked away from it all, and given the chance, I’d do it again. Even now I considered turning and running away from the man who approached me.

  Ethan jogged lightly toward me, and I took the opportunity to catch both my breath and my rollicking heartbeat. I would make the same choices again. I would. The Navy . . . serving my country . . . making history . . . it was all worth more than a man who would have only made me weak.

  He came closer until he stood before me. Quite suddenly I felt small as I stared my past in the face—shaven, a shock of hair falling in front of his eyes, a pair of running shorts and a white tank, Under Armour sneakers on his feet. My stomach trembled. He’d filled out in all the right places. No longer a scrawny teenager, everything about the man before me, right down to the small cleft in his chin, made my insides frantic. Out of control. The opposite of what I trained myself to be. The opposite of everything I took comfort in.

  And Ethan himself . . . he was so very clearly not military—polished, more preppy than warrior. Civilian to the core. I could picture him at the bow of a pristine sailboat rather than on the hard, unforgiving deck of a Navy destroyer. In short, he had always been too . . . something. Not soft—nice, maybe? Too proper. Too good for me, really.

  He cleared his throat, shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hey. I . . . I was hoping to catch you here.”

  “Yeah?” I was ashamed to admit, even to myself, that I had hoped to see him again before I left Massachusetts. That, while I knew it would be painful, a part of me wanted to revisit this piece of my past.

  “Yeah. You—you look great, Hayley.”

  I often wondered if my toned physique intimidated or even turned men off. But I was proud of my body. I worked hard at what I did—at being strong. If my body showed that . . . well, that was me.

  Why then did I have to doubt his words?

  A bit delayed, I decided a “Thanks” was better than no response at all. “You look good too.” I gestured toward the shore. “You want to walk?”

  He fell into step beside me. “I wanted to thank you for yesterday. For what you did for Braden. I—I looked at my phone for a second. Seriously, it was a second. If anything had happened to him, I’m not sure I could have ever forgiven myself. I’m not sure I even can now.”

  “It was definitely a freak thing. I’ve never known the undertow to be that strong here. I’m glad he’s okay. He got checked out?”

  Ethan nodded. “He’s all good. But only because of you. Really, thank you.”

  I shrugged off his gratitude, cleared my th
roat.

  A half-moon hung opposite the rapidly setting sun. The squawking of two bickering gulls competed with the gentle sound of the waves on the shore.

  “So what brings you back home, Hay?”

  Hay. The old nickname tugged at the tight, untuned strings of my rusty heart. Made me remember the first time Ethan kissed me on Lena’s front porch, the sound of mosquitoes hitting the porch light above us, the anticipation of Ethan’s lips almost as sweet as the kiss itself.

  That moment, bathed in innocence, would never be relived. I’d taken it for granted and hadn’t realized it. Now I had no right to be thinking on it, to be walking with this man in the romantic twilight when he had a family at home.

  “Just a little leave, is all.”

  “And the Navy. Is it everything you dreamed?”

  Silence stretched before us as the question leached the life from the summer air. Was that bitterness I heard? Yes, what I’d done after high school wouldn’t ever be considered the classiest way to end a relationship, but really, it had been six years. And clearly he’d moved on.

  I felt a headache mounting at my temples. “Navy’s great. I’ll be heading to California soon. For SEAL training.”

  “SEAL training? You serious?” His bare elbow brushed mine and I moved away.

  “I am.”

  “I—I didn’t realize there were women Navy SEALs.”

  “There aren’t. Yet.”

  “Ahh, gotcha. Well, if anyone can do it, it’d be you.”

  I searched his tone for sarcasm but found none.

  “That means a lot.” I looked down at our feet, caught his bare tanned leg out of the corner of my eye. “So how about you? I’m not one for social media, so I haven’t kept tabs on anyone.”

  “I finished school, messed around a little. I own an antique shop now.”

  I wondered if his “messing around” was how Braden had come about. “An antique shop? I wouldn’t have guessed that in a million years.”