Lost Chances

Every day at sundown, Leslie went to the edge of the ocean. She’d sit in her work clothes, toes licked by the waves, and watch as the sky changed until there were only pinpricks of stars and town lights. Sometimes she’d sit there longer, feeling in her bones that something would happen that would transform her like the sky. She could be bright blue or a sea of color, reflected back by all who met her. But when she left, she was always the deep darkness of the sky after there was nothing left but the distant stars and the faint whfoosh of the waves.

Every day she sat by the water, unless it was raining. Even those days, she’d sit beneath a gazebo by the parking lot and feel the surge of the ocean, hear the thunder screaming at her to go home and to bed, and fill up with the pressing, angry darkness. It was a night like this that she found the box, or rather realized that what she’d thought was a brick in the gazebo was actually a tiny sealed container about the size of two bricks laid end to end. It was the first night she went home early, drenched and sandy, because she finally felt that whatever she’d been waiting for at the ocean’s edge was here.

When Leslie got home, she took her time changing into dry clothes, making dinner, and preparing tea. It was only when she’d finished her nightly routine that she sat at the table with the box, taking her time to eat slowly while staring it. She was prepared for the disappointment of finding nothing but seashells left by some vacationing kid or a bunch of wet matches, and she didn’t want the tingle of excitement to end until she had to move forward.

With dinner finished and dishes put away, she poured another cup of tea and pulled the drying box toward her. It had blended into the gazebo’s structure, being about the same color as the bricks. The only reason she had noticed it at all was the small line straight across, just a millimeter from the top of the box. There was no lock or clasp, no identifying markings, no engravings to indicate the original owner.

Leslie pushed away from the table and went about her usual schedule. TV for an hour, where she stared more at the box than at the screen. She brought it to the bathroom when she brushed her teeth and combed out her hair, never letting it out of her sight as if it would walk out the door and back to the gazebo where it belonged. She couldn’t open it tonight, she decided. This night wasn’t special.

From that night onward, Leslie stopped going out to the beach to watch as the sun went down. Instead, she spent the extra time speculating what could be hidden in the box. She ordered a new black notebook for the sole purpose of cataloging what she thought could be hidden inside. She knew that it was there to be opened and wouldn’t take any effort at all, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t hers to open, yet she couldn’t return it because it felt like it should be hers.

When her notebook arrived, the first thing she wrote was “Finders Keepers,” but quickly crossed it out and wrote “My Little Treasure.” The first page was about the night she found it and how it couldn’t be anyone else’s but hers. The wind and the rain and the waves had chosen her, Leslie, to find this secret and the treasure inside.

The second page was a detailed description of the box, who she thought could have left it there, and why. There weren’t many clues to go on except that the box appeared to have been there for several years. She’d begun going to the beach to watch the sunset about 7 years ago, but it could have been left after that. She was watching the sky and not the gazebo, after all, and even when she was at the gazebo it was dark and stormy.

The uncertainty added to the possibilities, and what was going to be only one page turned into ten until she couldn’t think of any other scenarios. They ranged from fantastic (a pirate leaving a secret treasure when the gazebo was being built) to ordinary (a child had picked all of their favorite seashells and couldn’t bring them home so hid them the best they knew how).

Weeks had gone by, and Leslie was no closer to solving the mystery. Her days were filled with speculation about what she had found, but she wouldn’t tell anyone about the little box. She moved onto the third section of her diary: What is in the box?

In the beginning her guesses were wild. Pirates had definitely left a box of doubloons in case they needed a safe return. Then pirates turned into gangsters. Then gangsters turned into spies hiding secret codes. Months and pages flew past. She would go back and examine her past guesses and add tiny notes in the margins, editing her own theories and adding to the backstory until each guess seemed justified.

When months became a year, two years, three, the guesses started to be more practical. It was a drug drop, and she would find something illegal that she should have turned in ages ago to the police. It was a box of lovers’ notes, left by local teens to hide their secret rendezvous. It was a box of someone’s mother’s ashes who had loved that gazebo and would now haunt Leslie.

She refused to shake the box, fearing that it would damage whatever was inside, and she didn’t take into account the box’s weight because the idea of endless possibilities was far more reassuring than reality.

She got another notebook and brought it with her to work. When she wasn’t assisting customers, she would doodle pictures of trinkets and coins and shells. She would make up stories for the lovers who had left the letters in the box. When her boss asked what she was working on, she would say that she was writing a short story that had gotten out of hand.

Every waking moment was spent thinking about the little box that now had a home on her mantle. She wouldn’t invite anyone over in case they saw it, recognized it, and insist she return it to the rightful owner. She went through the motions, talking to acquaintances while carefully steering clear of the topic, doing her little household chores, but nothing took her mind away from what was now her mission.

Years turned into two decades. Her mantle was now full of black notebooks lined up in chronological order. Every so often she would pull one from the shelf to laugh at her earlier theories or add onto those that she thought were substantial. She researched piracy in the area and the gazebo’s history and any local legends she could find.

One day she went to the library to pick up a book that was being held about a local conspiracy during Prohibition, but she never returned home. The little box was left with her dozens of filled notebooks on the mantle while she was rushed to the hospital. Her heart had given out right there on the steps of the library while she perused the book before getting in her car.

It was months before her son Nate could bare to catalogue her possessions and face the prospect of selling the home he’d grown up in. The books lined along the mantle were packed away for him to read later when the wound of her loss wasn’t as fresh.

But when it came to inventorying the box… He’d never seen it before. He sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and opened it. Inside was a letter to his mother, plane tickets in her name and his, and a compass.

“My dearest Leslie Lovebug,

I don’t know where to begin. I guess first I should say I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I won’t be around to see our boy get married. I’m sorry that I never got around to fixing that leak in the master bath. I’m sorry I have to say goodbye to you so soon. Twenty-five years wasn’t enough, and I didn’t make all of those years as wonderful as you deserved. I’m so sorry that you’ve had to take care of me all of these months. I know it wasn’t easy and I didn’t make it easy with the constant complaints and jokes about my health.

Next, I want to say that I love you, and I always will. You know I can’t say I loved you the moment we met. That’s on you, though. You did spill a beer on my head because you thought I’d said something rude. You need to go get your ears checked, still, by the way. But you have a way of growing on a person, and you were my person. By our third date, we had planned to see the world together, and I’m sorry we never got to. Before all of this, I’d been saving up to take you everywhere. I had it all planned out. First, we’d go to Ireland, even though we both know you only want to go so you can drink Guinness and listen to music the whole time. Then, we’d go to France. I’d drag you through the Louvre by the ear just to show you some culture. Then we could share a patisserie. Anything to spend every second tougher. We’d go to Australia so I could protect you from those enormous spiders.

We’d go everywhere we wanted, my Lovebug, so long as we could go together.

I can’t take you, but I want you to take Nate. Everything is paid for and in this box. You can exchange the tickets for whenever you are ready to go. All told, it’s worth about $20,000. The receipts are here in the box, too, so don’t you let them try to exchange it for anything less. Take the compass with you. I put my picture in it, but if you want to put something more exciting in just don’t tell me. You’re also terrible with directions, so you’ll be able to find your way back to our home with it.

If you’re wondering how I knew you’d find this old box at the gazebo, surprise! I’m a ghost… I hope when you’re reading this you found that funny and not morbid. I actually just kind of knew you’d find it when you needed it the most. And if you didn’t, Janet next door is supposed to give it to you if you haven’t found it in a few years.

I love you more than life itself. Please enjoy our trip, and when you see me next, let me know all about it.

Your love, Jake.”