contents — mostly clothes — spilling out onto the floor and eaten at as well.
I walked around the pile. There was an antique mission style chair placed in the corner of the room, facing the windows, a lamp beside it. I imagined Sharon Steele placing it there. Selecting the location after surveying the room, making a futile effort to make the house feel more like a home — more like her home — on the day her stuff was delivered. I kicked at an unraveled sweater, half of which had been drug off somewhere, likely as material for a nest, but no mice scurried from the open boxes. I moved a tall wardrobe box to one side, hesitating, waiting for something hideous to leap out at me. Nothing. I took a deep breath and laughed at myself; the laughter echoed through the empty house.
Liz asked, “What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know.” And I really didn’t. “We’re just kind of looking, I guess.”
I unfolded the cardboard flaps of the boxes on the top of the pile. One was full of books, another filled with papers and files, and the third contained the photo albums I assumed Becky had been talking about. I opened one and its plastic pages, stuck together with heat and time, turned in clumps of two or three. Liz opened another.
Peeling several pages apart, I examined the pictures with an odd, detached interest. Scenes of people I did not know, taken in a living room during what might have been Thanksgiving. It looked like the late 70s, or maybe early 80s. There was a small girl in one of the pictures and I wondered if it was Becky.
I tried to identify Steele in some of the pictures, but could not. As I stood there, catching a glimpse of the those private things Sharon Steele had run off with in the days before her death, I realized I couldn’t identify her in any of the pictures because I did not know what she looked like. I had seen a few pictures of her in the news reports about the murder, but I had lost those few images and now had nothing to identify her by. I put the album back and grabbed another. The problem persisted.
Liz looked up at me with a sadness coloring her eyes. “I think these are all of her family. These were the things that she wanted to preserve.” She set the photo album on the pile like it was made of thin, delicate glass. “It’s just so sad. These are the things she chose to take with her when she finally had the courage to leave her failed marriage.”
I picked up the box of pictures to set them aside and the bottom fell out, sending the books tumbling to the floor. I tossed the remains of the box back behind me and piled the photo albums off to the side. As I pushed the stacks of boxes further apart to get at one that had fallen between them, I noticed that, at the bottom and in the middle of the pile was a wooden box.
“Hey, check this out,” I said.
Liz helped me pull the rest of the boxes away from it. “What is it?”
I slid it out from the pile with my foot. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s Becky Steele’s long lost hope chest.”
The chest was about three feet long, a foot deep and a foot and a half wide. It was old and solid, well made and heavy. I picked it up by the ornate brass handles at each end and gave it a shake. The thick brass lock dangling from the hasp rattled, but nothing shifted inside when I shook it. I set it back down, placed the photo albums on top and lifted it again. I carried the pile out to the car and placed it in the trunk.
“At least Becky can get these things back,” I said, as Liz closed the trunk.
She stood beside me, close, nearly leaning against me. “I hope that’s not the only good thing to come from this whole mess.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted to turn and take hold of her, but resisted. It didn’t seem right. Whether because of the haunting quality of the house or because I was too scared to upset the fragile balance Liz and I had attained, I couldn’t say.
Instead, I lingered for another minute and said, as I walked back to the house, “Best