I rolled up the door of unit 63, dreading the worst, and the light fell on a woodshop, tools laid out neat as a pin, and all around the walls, finished furniture, beautiful pieces, each one tagged with a little handwritten card bearing a name I knew. Our grandchildrens names.
I stepped inside, trembling, and read the nearest card. It said: For Katie, when she has her own home.
Only came at night, the young man had said, and now I understood, my Bill worked on these by day sometimes but mostly at night, after I was asleep, so I would never catch on, because these were meant to be a surprise handed down over years.
For sixteen years, my Bill had been secretly building a piece of furniture for every one of our grandchildren, a hope chest, a rocking chair, a cradle, a writing desk, each made by hand and set aside for the day that child would need it.
There was a piece for every grandchild, and a few marked simply, for the great-grandbabies to come. Sixteen years of nights he told me he could not sleep and was going for a drive, he was out here, building a legacy of furniture so that a piece of him would live in every grandchilds home long after he was gone.
His letter sat on the workbench. He wrote: Old girl, I could not leave the grandkids much money, we never had much. So I left them this instead. A man should leave his grandchildren something they can put their hands on, something he made himself. I came at night so you would not spoil at it and so I would not blab, you know I cannot keep a secret. Finish handing these out for me. Tell them their granddaddy made every joint with his own hands, thinking of them. Love, Bill.
I wept in that workshop, running my hand over a cedar chest built for a granddaughter still in high school.
Only at night. My Bill had been building the future of our family in the dark, one loving piece at a time.
I have been giving the pieces out ever since. When our Katie got her first apartment, I gave her the hope chest with her name on it, and inside she found a letter from the granddaddy who built it before she was grown.
Our oldest grandson has taken up Bills tools now, finishing the last few pieces, learning the craft his granddaddy left behind.
My daughter did not know why I drove across town. Now she knows her daddy was building furniture for her children and her childrens children. Only at night, for love and for surprise. His hands are in every joint. They always will be.