The second I looked inside, I forgot how to breathe, because the lockbox held a womans jewelry, a wedding ring, a strand of pearls, a locket, all nested in velvet, and beneath them a stack of love letters tied with a faded ribbon, sixty years old if they were a day.
I sat at that picnic table and lifted the locket to the light, and inside was a photograph of a young couple, laughing.
The zippered bag held more. Photo albums. A folded quilt. And a marked-up map of the American West, with a single spot circled and starred out in the desert.
The old man who owned this motorhome had been carrying his whole marriage with him, everywhere he drove, his late wifes most precious things hidden under the floor where no thief and no careless buyer would ever find them, because they were the only treasure he had left.
There was a letter, of course. He wrote that his name was Harold, that his wife Margaret had passed three years back, and that after she died he could not bear to keep her things in an empty house, so he had sold the house, bought the motorhome, and taken her with him, her ring and her pearls and her letters, on the road they had always meant to travel together.
The circled spot on the map, out in the desert, was a place called Dead Horse Point, where he and Margaret had gotten engaged sixty years before, on a road trip in their youth. He wrote that he had been driving back to it, to scatter a small portion of her ashes there, when his health finally gave out and he had to sell the rig.
The letter ended: Whoever you are, I could not finish my last errand. Margarets ashes are in the small tin in the bag. Please, if you have any kindness in you, take her to Dead Horse Point and let her rest where we began. I will owe you forever, from wherever I am.
I found the tin. And I could not do anything but what he asked.
I drove that old motorhome out to Dead Horse Point, to the very overlook Harold had described, where he and Margaret had promised themselves to each other sixty years before. And at sunset, with the whole red canyon glowing below, I scattered a little of Margaret to the wind, and I read one of Harolds love letters aloud, so their words would be there together one last time.
I kept Margarets ring and pearls safe, and I tracked down a distant niece of Harolds who wept to receive them, having thought all the family keepsakes lost.
I bought a motorhome for a trip. I ended up carrying two people home to the place they fell in love. Harold, Margaret, she rests where you began now. I saw to it. Rest easy, the both of you.