Treasures

West Virginia, 1984

The vanity arrived on a Tuesday.

Julie knew this because Tuesday was grocery day, and when she came home, there it sat, squarely in the middle of her front porch, blocking the door.

It was enormous.

Dark wood, heavy, with a great round mirror rising from the back and drawers marching down either side. The little upholstered bench had been turned upside down and placed on the top.

There was no note.

There didn't need to be.

After the funeral, her brother had been helping clear out Grandma's house. Apparently, he'd decided that because Julie liked old things, she would naturally want an antique vanity deposited on her porch without so much as a howdy-do.

Robert's own house was filled with glass-topped tables, polished brass, and furniture that looked as though no human being had ever been invited to sit on it.

Of course he didn't want Grandma's vanity.

Julie ran her fingers over the worn edge of the top.

She remembered it.

As a little girl, she'd sat on that bench while Grandma brushed her hair. There had been cold cream in a white jar, a silver-backed brush and bottles of perfume Julie wasn't allowed to touch.

By Saturday, the vanity was cleaned, polished and settled into the spare bedroom.

And Julie was thoroughly in love with it.

There was only one problem.

The top right drawer wouldn't open.

She tugged. She wiggled. She threatened. She even fetched a screwdriver before thinking better of it.

It wasn't stuck.

It was locked.

The key turned up in the bottom drawer, pushed all the way to the back beneath a yellowed piece of shelf paper.

The little lock opened with a surprisingly crisp click.

Inside was a green velvet jewelry box.

Julie carried it to the bed and lifted the lid.

Three little trays rose with it, unfolding one above another.

For a moment, she simply looked.

There were creamy strands of pearls and deep red stones. Green glass earrings. A turquoise brooch. Violet beads. Tiny colored pins. Gold chains wound through everything, their clasps catching the afternoon light.

Some pieces she remembered.

Others she'd never seen.

Julie spent nearly thirty minutes lifting things from their velvet compartments. Grandma's jewelry wasn't worth a fortune. Most of it was probably costume jewelry, bought here and there over a lifetime.

But Julie remembered the rings.

She remembered a green brooch fastened to Grandma's winter coat.

And there was the pearl necklace Grandma always wore to church.

Then, at the very bottom, beneath the last tray, peeped a photograph.

Julie picked it up carefully.

A very young woman stood beside a soldier at a train station.

He was looking directly at the camera, already composed for the picture. But the young woman wasn't.

She was looking at him.

The photographer must have pressed the shutter a moment too soon, before someone told her to turn toward the camera. It wasn't the photograph they'd meant to take.

It was better.

She couldn't have been more than eighteen. Her dark hair was pinned neatly, and she was beautiful—really beautiful. But it was the expression on her face that held Julie.

She was looking up at the young soldier as though, for that one unguarded second, she'd forgotten anyone else was there.

Julie knew that smile.

Grandma.

She stared at the photograph.

She had known the stooped woman with silver hair. The woman who made biscuits without measuring anything and always carried peppermint candies in her purse. The woman who sat at this vanity every evening and brushed out her hair.

She had never known this girl.

Julie looked at the soldier again.

Handsome. Young. Serious for the camera. Perhaps he was completely unaware of the look on the girl's face being preserved beside him.

She turned the photograph over.

In faded pencil were four words.

Union Station
Spring, 1918

Nothing else.

No name.

Julie sat very still.

She knew Grandma's photographs. The family had spent days going through them after her death, the albums and boxes full of weddings, babies, Christmas dinners and summer picnics. There were pictures of Grandpa as a young man. Pictures of Grandma and Grandpa together.

This photograph had not been among them.

Grandma had kept this one somewhere else.

In a jewelry box.

In a locked drawer.

Julie turned it over again.

Was the soldier Grandpa?

She honestly couldn't tell.

She tried to summon the old photographs of him in her mind, comparing jawlines and eyes across more than sixty years.

Maybe.

But something about the photograph made her wonder.

Perhaps it was simply the way Grandma was looking at him.

Julie considered calling her mother.

Instead, she sat quietly on Grandma's little bench, the photograph resting in her hands.

Sixty-six years.

Grandma had kept this photo for sixty-six years, tucked beneath layers of pearls and colored glass and old gold, inside a green velvet box, in a locked drawer.

Whatever had happened after the photographer clicked the shutter belonged to two young people at a train station in the spring of 1918.

Maybe there had been another photograph a moment later—the proper one, with both of them facing the camera and smiling politely.

But Grandma had kept this one.

Julie smiled a little.

Surely that was answer enough.

She returned the photograph to the bottom of the box.

Then she lowered the trays one by one, watching the colors settle together again—cream and burgundy, green and turquoise, violet and little glints of gold.

She closed the lid.

Some treasures told you exactly why they had been kept.

Others left you to wonder.

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The Yarn Behind the Story

Treasures — HS-669

Treasures was inspired by the beautiful colors hidden inside Grandma's jewelry box: warm creams and deep burgundies, rich forest greens and sparkling turquoise, lovely violets and tiny hints of old gold.