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The rain intensified as I passed the playground, the nostalgia coalescing into a hot ball that sat heavily in the pit of my stomach. I saw the slides I used to climb backwards, the swings my father pushed me on. It seemed like yesterday I was a giggling six-year old, running around playing hide and seek with him. Hiding and then finding little colorful ‘treasures’ using hot and cold clues. Treasures that consisted of anything from pine-cones to figurines to little pieces of string.
I was eighteen when I graduated high school. I stayed in town attending community college, building up the credits I’d need to transfer to something bigger and better. I was working too. Saving money. After nearly two years of awkward fighting, Warren and Luke had moved away — each of them taking off in different directions to pursue their own academic goals.
And shortly after that, my whole world came crashing down.
It was a night like this one that the knock finally came. The police officers stood in my parent’s foyer, dripping rain on my parent’s floor. Only that night it becamemyfloor, for a little while anyway. The night my parent’s Land Rover skidded off Route 204, bumping through a drainage ditch and then launching into a tree.
In the span of a single minute I was the last surviving member of my already small family. My mother’s flaky sister had moved away years ago. She didn’t even attend the funeral. My last surviving uncle had moved to the mountains, presumably to get away from civilization.
That left me… and a funeral to pay for. And a mortgage to figure out. And college tuition. And—
And lots of different things.
My legs took me away from the park, over a slight rise and into the field of bright green grass made slick by the rain. Here, my father and I had played soccer together. We’d thrown Frisbees and launched water rockets. Sometimes my mother had joined us, and those were my favorite times of all. But unlike my father, my mother wasn’t lucky enough to work from home. She saw a lot less of me, so the time we spent together was even more precious.
I walked some more, balancing the shovel over my shoulder. There was no one around. No one to question what I was doing, not that it mattered, not that—
There it is!
The bigleaf maple launched itself into the sky, looking every bit as huge and impressive as it had when I was a child. It stood at the far corner of the field, presiding over the only part of the park that wasn’t regularly used. It stood away from the ballfields, far from the worn cement paths.
I stood beneath it for a moment, admiring its beauty. Then I turned my back on it, pointed my nose at the distant swing-set, and counted out ten measured steps.
Tiny steps, Kayla. Your feet were smaller, remember?
I chuckled, remembering how important this all seemed at the time. How incredibly excited I was that we were burying arealtreasure, just like the pirates did.
After ten steps I spun on my heel, swung out my arm, and pointed my fingers like a gun at the soccer field’s metal goalposts. They were still old, still rusty. But I was banking on the idea that they hadn’t been moved.
Ten more. Or was it twelve?
It had been a long time. Maybe too long, and the sands of time had obscured my memory.
I counted out the little girl steps, then buried the shovel in the soft earth. It was easy digging. The ground was saturated, and the blade sank easily without much effort.
How deep was it?
When I was young, my father had dug the hole. He probably went deep, figuring he’d be the one to dig it up later on. He had no way of knowing that would never happen. That it would be me coming back, here some twenty years later. All alone.
THUNK.
Hope soared at the sound of metal striking wood. It could’ve been a root. Or it could’ve been something else entirely.
A time capsule. Just for us.
I dug some more, moving faster, widening the hole. Trying to remember how big it needed to be, in order to bury—
“Oh my God…”
I sank to my knees, scraping away the mud that was quickly forming inside the hole. And there it was: the tiny wooden box. Faded and filthy, but still marked with the big pink chrysanthemum. I dug around it, loosening the dirt before popping it free. It opened on rusted hinges. Inside, the Ziploc bag my mother had given us was still sealed.
Abandoning my plan to take it back to the car, I tore it open. Inside I saw the treasures we’d buried: various trinkets and baubles that would only be important to a seven-year old girl. There was a stuffed mouse. A pair of plastic beaded bracelets, and a 25-cent bubblegum machine ruby ring.
I pushed past the coins I’d insisted on putting in there — pennies mostly — so my future self ‘would have lots of money’. My father had added a dollar and it was still there, causing the lump in my throat to form again. This time I didn’t fight it. Same thing for the tears.
C’mon… c’mon…
Beneath the rubber dolphin, past the two little Fisher Price figures I’d sacrificed for the cause, I saw the object of my search: a Play Doh container with a bright pink top. My hands trembled as I popped it open, and shook out the contents into my palm. Even in the dying light, it gleamed like the day I’d buried it:
