Chapter 11: Two Tins

"She had two," Ansel said again, as if I might have missed it.

I sat on the stool, still wrapped in the quilt, my bare feet on the cold rung.

"Two what?"

"Tins." He rested his hand flat on the blue lid. "Green one's for the Hall. This one was ours."

He had said ours as if it were the most ordinary word in the world.

"Barton took the green one," I said.

"I know."

"He'll never find this one."

"No."

"Why not?"

Ansel almost smiled. "She'd have hidden it in the Hall's flour bin if she could. She trusted me with it instead."

He pushed the tin across the steel an inch.

His fingers shook the whole way.

"Read," he said.

I lifted the lid.

It was full of index cards, hundreds of them, soft with age, held with a rubber band so old it had gone to crumbs.

The first card was dated in blue ink, December 23, 1974.

In my grandmother's looping hand it said, The church basement is under two feet of water.

Can you roast a turkey? I have 80 people coming. W.

Under it, in square black capitals, someone had written: CAN I ROAST A TURKEY. A.

And under that, in her loop again, smaller: You are a fool. Come at four.

I put a hand over my mouth.

"She was thirty-two," Ansel said. "I was thirty-four. We worked from four in the morning until the church bells."

I turned the card over.

On the back, in her hand: He wears the same plaid shirt every day. I counted the stitches. Eleven hundred.

Under it, in his: I counted yours.

My eyes stung.

I read the next card, and the next, and soon I had forgotten the cold floor.

They were recipes, yes, scribbled out across the years, a pinch of this, a splash of that.

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