Inside that compartment under the stair tread was a small diary with a red leather cover and a brass clasp. The key was still tied to it with a piece of ribbon. On the inside cover, in careful girlish handwriting, it said, Property of Dorothy Mae Clark, age 14. Private. That means you, Charles.
I laughed out loud. Then I stopped laughing.
The couple who hired me, Steve and Laurie, came in from the living room. Laurie opened to the first page. January 1, 1943.
It was the diary of a girl during the war. Every page. Her brother Charles had shipped out to the Pacific that spring. She wrote about waiting for letters. About the gold star in the window across the street. About rationing sugar so her mother could send cookies overseas. About praying every night on those same stairs for Charles to come home.
The last entry was dated August 15, 1945. It was only one line, written so hard the pencil nearly tore the page. He is coming home.
A fourteen year old girl had hidden three years of her whole heart under the step she sat on every night to wait for the mailman.
Laurie wanted to find her. It took one phone call to the historical society in Moundsville. Dorothy Mae Clark married in 1951 and became Dorothy Mae Pritchard. She taught second grade in Marshall County for thirty eight years.
And she was still alive. Ninety seven years old. Living with her daughter in Wheeling.
Laurie called the daughter. The daughter put her mother on the phone. Laurie told her what we found.
There was a long silence. Then a thin, clear voice said, that is my diary. I looked for that for eighty years. I thought my mother threw it out.
Laurie drove it to Wheeling the next Saturday. She let me come. Dorothy was sitting in a recliner by the window with a blanket over her knees. When she saw that red cover, she held out both hands.
She opened it to the last page. She read that one line. Then she closed it and held it to her chest and did not say anything for a long time.
Then she told us about Charles. He came home in December 1945. He married, had four children, ran a hardware store in Moundsville, and lived to be ninety one. She said he never knew she wrote about him every single day. She said she was too embarrassed to tell him.
Her daughter asked if she wanted to keep it. Dorothy said yes. Then she changed her mind.
She asked if Laurie would put it back.
So when I rebuilt that staircase, I made the fourth step lift, just like the old one. Dorothy asked for a copy of every page first. Her grandchildren are reading it now.
The original is back under the stair, where a girl sat waiting for her brother.
I have rebuilt a lot of staircases. That is the only one I ever built with a secret in it on purpose.