For three days, he wouldn’t stop digging.
Not for squirrels—this was work. The same patch under the maple. I filled the hole; he reopened it. I yelled. Dragged him inside. He just sat at the glass door and whined—low, miserable, obsessive.
On the third day, I grabbed a spade. One strike. Two.
A dull thud.
I dug with my hands and found a leather corner, a rusted clasp. An old suitcase.
Inside wasn’t money or bones, but a life: a blanket, a silver locket, a photograph of a young couple beneath my maple, and letters.
Thomas wrote to his “dearest Eleanor” about dances, dreams, and building her a house on this very land. My house. In 1942 he enlisted, burying their “box of dreams” with fifty dollars for train tickets when he returned.
He never did. Killed in Normandy, 1944.
I tracked down Eleanor’s daughter, Sarah. Eleanor had known. She chose to leave the suitcase buried—her promise waiting with him. She married, raised a family, but sometimes drove past the tree.
When Sarah opened the case, she wept. The letters. The photo. The fifty dollars still hidden in the lining—their ticket to anywhere.
She gave me the silver locket to keep.
I thought my dog had found a problem. He’d found a love story.
Some things aren’t buried to be forgotten. They’re buried to be found.