Story Nadia had not seen her aunt ' s house for nine years . The road west was long , and by the time the bus stopped at the end of the village the sky had lost its colour . Her aunt Vera was standing at the door in an old green hat with one hand up , as if she had been waiting there all weekend .
The kitchen had not changed . The same wood table , the same plants in the window , the same warm smell of eggs and coffee . Vera was already cooking when Nadia came in , and she would not stop to sit down . " Eat first , " she said . " We can talk after . "
In the morning Nadia walked into the village while her aunt was still in bed . Everything was smaller than she remembered . The shop by the church had gone , and somebody had put a block of small new houses on the field where the old school had been . Two old fellows outside the bar looked at her , worked out whose daughter she was , and went back to their conversation . The air reminded her of something she could not name .
They talked until late that night . Vera did most of it , and after a while the conversation turned to her brother . When she was a girl , she said , the two of them had put a box in the wood behind the house . Everything they cared about had gone into it : a photo , a ring , a letter . They had planned to dig it up when they were grown . Then her brother had gone to the army , and he had not come back , and nobody had gone near the wood again . " I usually do not think about it , " Vera said . " But you are here now . "
They went out as soon as they had eaten . It was cold , and a low wind was moving through the trees . Vera walked in front , counting as she went , and she had more energy than a woman of her age had any right to . Nadia was carrying the knife and the bag and a strange nervous feeling , and twice she almost said the thing she was thinking : that a wood does not keep still , that the trees had grown , that they were hunting for something which no longer existed .
For an hour they found nothing . They dug in three places and got stones , cold water and colder ground . A dog came out of the trees , looked at them and went off to chase something in the dark part of the wood . Nadia ' s nose and ears hurt . She was working out how to say that they should go home when Vera stopped and stood very still .
" I had it wrong , " Vera said . " Not the trees . Trees move . The stone does not . " She was shaking a little . She pointed at a low stone by the water , and they dug there , and after ten minutes the knife hit something hard .
The box had gone the colour of the ground , but it opened . Inside was the photo , two children in front of the same house ; the ring , with its stone missing ; and the letter , whole and clean , still in her brother ' s writing . Vera did not read it out . She sat down where she was and cried , and Nadia sat next to her and said nothing at all . Later , in the kitchen , her aunt told the whole story again , and this time she remembered every detail : the day , the wind , the dog that had followed them , the way the two of them had been laughing .
They came back before the rain . Vera put the photo on the kitchen wall by the door and refused to discuss where else it might go . Late that night Nadia was lying upstairs in the dark with the window open , listening to her aunt still moving about under her , settling the house . The moon was over the wood . Out there was a hole in the ground where a box had waited most of a life for somebody to remember it . Nadia had come for a weekend . Suddenly nine years looked like a very stupid way to live .
