She was already behind the steering wheel ready to start home when she heard a buzzing noise and realized that while her ringer was off, the vibrating feature wasn’t. She pulled out the phone and saw the call was from the same maybe-Florida number.
“Is this Jo Miller?” a woman asked when she answered. The woman sounded genuinely friendly, not like someone trying to sell something.
“Who’s calling?” Jo asked.
“This is Lydia Grant, Eric’s mother.”
Jo settled back. “Mrs. Grant, it’s so nice to hear from you.” Then she had a thought. “Is everything...all right?”
“With Eric? Yes, honey, he’s fine. We heard from him last night. And Olivia seems to be adjusting to this deployment, poor girl. She’s keeping busy.”
Jo wished she was close enough to her cousin to just pick up the phone and have a heart-to-heart, but she wasn’t sure if Olivia would appreciate baring her soul to someone who was nearly a stranger.
“I was able to visit your house,” Jo said. “Brody Ryan took me there. But we didn’t find the right box. We’ll try again when he’s not so busy. Right now he’s plowing driveways. We had quite a snowfall.”
“Oh, good, I was going to give you Brody’s number. Did you know him before this? From your summers as a girl?”
Jo gazed into the distance. “We’d met.”
“Well, before I forget, there’s also a key hidden in the wood bin just to the side of the house. It’s in a little metal box. My husband reminded me last night. Now you can take your time and search without bothering Brody. The box of baby things is clearly marked, at the front of the first pile.”
“Thank you, I’ll look for the key, but we did look through the front pile when we were inside and didn’t see it.”
“Odd.” Mrs. Grant paused. “Maybe the label fell off? Anyway, originally the box itself contained...let me think...oh, I remember, a set of pots and pans, and pictures of the pots are on the outside. I repacked it this summer, or, of course, I wouldn’t remember. So look for that. The set was red cast aluminum. It’s been gone for years, but the box was sturdy as a crate.”
Jo thanked her and prepared to end the conversation.
“I like saving Brody any work I can,” Mrs. Grant said. “He’s the nicest young man. Eric and Olivia think the world of him, but all of us do worry.”
Jo told herself not to pursue this. Just before she went ahead and asked, “Really? Why?”
“Well, he’s had such a hard go of it. His dad was sick for such a long time, and Brody was right there through the thick of it, helping his mother with nursing care, handling everything on their property, trying to make a go of things so they didn’t lose their home and livelihood as his dad declined. Of course, I don’t know for sure, but I would guess no matter how good their health insurance was, the medical bills were probably a crushing burden.”
Jo didn’t know what to say. This was all news to her, and she felt a stab of sympathy for the Ryan family.
“I’ve never heard him complain, though,” Mrs. Grant added. “He’s not somebody who would. But we still worry. That kind of thing marks you. He grew up way too fast. He works too hard and plays too little. Maybe you can cheer him up while you’re there? Get him to do something fun? Old friends are the best.”
They were—unless one of them had told the other to take a hike after years of planning a life together.
“I’ll do what I can,” Jo said.
“He needs to be young again. He’s been old for years now.”
“Years?”
“Oh, yes, years. His father died some time ago. Such a shame.”
They said goodbye and Jo hung up, but she continued to stare into the distance without starting the car.
How long ago had Mr. Ryan died? He and Brody had been close. The whole family had been close, and she had looked forward to becoming part of it one day. Had Mr. Ryan already been sick when she knew him?
And exactly when had Brody discovered that his father would need him, discovered that the whole family would need him?
A long time ago...sick for such a long time...as his dad declined...
When he broke their engagement had Brody known about his father’s illness? Had he believed that devoting himself to his family would take such a commitment that he simply couldn’t make one to her, as well? Had he known that years of nursing a dying father was no way to begin a marriage, and so he’d told Jo goodbye?
She was probably wrong. But suddenly she knew she had to discover the truth, and that meant spending time with Brody. Because he wasn’t someone she could simply ask, and she wasn’t a person who asked those kinds of questions anyway. This was too personal, too intimate. She couldn’t dig up the past, at least not in giant shovelfuls. She had to inch into it, a thimbleful at a time. If she cared enough.
The windshield was fogging inside and out, and she realized she was sitting inside an unheated car. She started the engine and pulled away from the curb, but once she got outside town, she didn’t turn off at Hollymeade. She continued on, heading for the Grants’ house. If she was lucky, Brody would already have plowed.
When she arrived, she saw the driveway was clear.
She parked in front and tramped through piles of snow, rounding the corner to the side where the wood bin was kept. The weather had warmed, and the snow was now heavy and wet, not powdery as it had been. She swept a foot of it off the top of the bin with the windshield scraper she’d gotten at the Trading Post and managed to pry it open. The metal box with the key was in plain sight.
Inside the house she took off her boots and climbed the steps to the second floor, then the attic. Ten minutes later she found the box covered with pictures of a long-departed set of pots and pans on the pile farthest from the door, the pile Mrs. Grant wasn’t supposed to have gone through yet. She managed to unearth the box by moving many others away first. When she turned it to see the opposite side, the label was proof she had found the right one.
She was sorry Mrs. Grant hadn’t remembered where she’d put it, but at least she had remembered the box itself. Jo carefully peeled back several strips of duct tape and opened the flaps to a treasure of baby shirts and bibs and, under them, a layer of half a dozen baby quilts.
It didn’t take her long to find what she wanted. Two quilts at the bottom had been well used and loved. She could understand why Mrs. Grant hadn’t been able to part with them, but they would never be used for their original purpose again. Both were literally hanging by a thread, although some of the fabric was still good.
She took them both; then she carefully repacked the box, hoping that one day a child of Olivia’s might have a chance to wear something from it. Finally she considered what to do. If Brody made a concerted effort to find this box on their next visit, he might very well locate it if it remained where it was in a pile they hadn’t yet searched.
Could she hide this box deep in the first pile, the pile they had already sorted through? Mistakes could be made, right? And until and if he happened on it again, she would buy more time with him in the attic, and more excuses to be together.
“My goodness, how did we miss it in this pile the first time?” she said out loud, practicing the words in case she actually needed to say them. “I can’t believe we didn’t find it. It was right where we looked at the beginning, Brody.”
She laughed, a sound that was almost unfamiliar.
Did she dare?
When the boxes were piled exactly to her satisfaction, she relocked