Part 35 (1/2)

We walked a short distance down the hall. ”Here's our son's room.” Ruth pointed to her left. Inside, the room was just barely wide enough to fit a twin bed and a tiny dresser.

”This was Mom and Dad's room, right?” I looked to Julie for confirmation.

”Yes.” She smiled. ”They didn't have much s.p.a.ce, did they?”

Across the hall was the kitchen, and it was unrecognizable as any room we'd ever lived in, with white gla.s.s-fronted cabinetry and granite countertops. Julie laughed.

”Well,” she said, running her hand across the blue-gray granite. ”I can tell you our kitchen looked nothing like this. This is beautiful.”

”This-and being on the water, of course-were what sold us on the house,” Ruth said.

We walked the last few steps of the hallway into the living room, which was painted a soft yellow and furnished with chairs and love seats upholstered in a variety of blue-and-yellow prints. Gauzy white curtains hung at the windows.

”This room seems much more open than it did before,” I said.

”You're right,” Julie said. ”I think it was a darker color or something. I love it like this.”

”We used to play Uncle Wiggly in here,” Ethan said.

”I beg your pardon?” Ruth asked with a laugh.

”It was a board game,” Julie explained.

I looked down at the oak-colored laminate beneath my bare feet. ”This used to be linoleum,” I said. Then my eyes were drawn to the staircase at the side of the room. ”Look!” I said. ”Real stairs!”

Julie laughed. ”We had pull-down stairs when we were kids,” she said. ”Lucy was terrified of them.”

”Would you like to see up there?” Ruth asked.

”Would you mind?” Julie lifted her hair off her neck, as she often did when she was having a hot flash. ”It was an open attic when we were kids,” she continued. ”Just a bunch of beds divided by curtains.”

”Like a dormitory?” Ruth asked.

”Sort of.”

The three of us followed Ruth up the stairs, where we discovered the attic had been completely transformed. Now it contained an office with three skylights, a large playroom, two small bedrooms and a bathroom with a shower. Everything looked scrubbed and neat and well loved. You would have to work really hard to feel any bad memories in this house, I thought. There was nothing from the past left to trigger them.

I thought of asking to use the bathroom. I was okay for the moment, but I knew that my infected urinary tract could and would act up at any minute. Julie, Ruth and Ethan, though, were already heading back toward the stairs. I could wait.

Once we were downstairs again, Julie turned to Ruth. ”It makes me happy to see how nice the whole house looks,” she said, touching our hostess's arm. ”I can tell you love living here.”

”We do,” she said, guiding us through the open French doors onto the porch. ”Was the porch screened when you lived here?” she asked.

”Uh-huh,” Julie said, looking from one end of the porch to the other. ”This is where we spent most of our time.”

I remembered the porch. Of all the house, it had changed the least, perhaps because the view was still of the small sandy backyard and the water. A long farm table and six ladder-back chairs stood where our old table used to be, and white faux wicker rockers and love seats and coffee tables filled the rest of the s.p.a.ce.

The little boy I'd seen in the pool was sitting in the backyard, sharing a lounge chair with a man who appeared to be reading to him in the fading light. Nothing made me happier than seeing a parent sharing a book with a child.

Ruth must have seen me watching them. ”Come meet my family,” she said.

We walked outside. The sand in the backyard was already cooling down, and it felt good beneath my feet. The man spotted us and he and the boy stood up.

”Hi, Ethan,” the man said. ”And these must be the former owners.”

Ethan introduced us to Ruth's husband, Jim, and their seven-year-old son, Carter. We chatted about the house and the area for a few minutes, swatting mosquitoes as darkness began to close in on us.

Julie's gaze s.h.i.+fted to the part of the yard nearest the corner of the house. ”When I was a kid,” she said, pointing, ”I buried a box of treasures right over there.”

”A treasure box?” Carter asked, looking interested in our conversation for the first time.

Julie nodded.

”Could it still be there?” Ruth asked.

Julie shrugged. ”I don't know,” she said. ”Maybe someone found it during the last forty years, or they had some work done to the house foundation and it got disturbed.”

”Or maybe it is is still there,” Ethan said. He nudged Julie. ”Do you want to see?” still there,” Ethan said. He nudged Julie. ”Do you want to see?”

Julie looked at our hosts. ”It wasn't buried very deep,” she said, and I knew she was rea.s.suring them that we wouldn't be digging up their entire yard. ”Just a few inches, really.”

Ruth looked at her husband, whose expression said, Why the heck not? Why the heck not? ”I'll get a shovel and flashlight,” he said, and he headed toward the garage. ”I'll get a shovel and flashlight,” he said, and he headed toward the garage.

Carter looked up at Julie. Even in the dim light, I could see he had his mother's pretty blue eyes. ”What did you put in the box?” he asked.

”Things I found,” she said, as we started walking toward the corner of the house. ”Just silly things.”

Jim returned with a garden shovel and a strong halogen lantern.

”You know,” Ruth said, looking at the small shovel her husband had provided, ”people have brought in fresh sand over the years. We had a couple of truckloads come in when we moved here. It might be down pretty far by now, if it's still there at all.”

Julie took the shovel and knelt in the sand, glancing at the corner of the house, taking some measurement with her eyes. I could tell that, even after all this time, she knew exactly where the box should be. With the shovel, she smoothed away a couple of inches of sand from the surface of the ground. Then she set the blade of the shovel into the sand at a ninety-degree angle, and we heard it hit something solid.

”Oh, my G.o.d,” Julie said. ”It's still here.”

We all sat down on the ground, and Carter and I helped sweep the sand away with our hands, while Julie worked with the shovel and Jim held the lantern balanced on his knee. Soon the top of the box was completely exposed, and Julie dug her fingers around the lid on one side while I did the same on the other.

Julie looked at me across the box. ”One, two, three,” she said, and we lifted the lid together, sending a fine dusting of sand onto the objects below.

Carter reached into the bread box, and I wanted to stop him. This was Julie's box of treasures. I wanted her to be able to do this herself.