When Tess is small, she keeps the letter from her grandfather in a little jeweled box her mother gave her for her seventh birthday. Lifting the lid plays a sweet, pretty, feminine tune, what she will learn later is The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy from her favorite ballet, The Nutcracker. Every year, her father takes her and her mother to a performance at the university, Tess in her shiny black Mary Janes and a pretty pink dress, Mother in heels and pearls; it will be this memory she takes out the most often, replaying it again and again as she grows from girl to teen to young woman.
It will be the memory she keeps closest to her heart when her parents are killed in a car accident when she is twenty-two, the year she graduates magna cum laude from university with a degree in animal science. Her plans to attend veterinary school are derailed sharply: there is no money in her trust, all of it lost on a bad turn of the stock market, and it is get a job or starve. Joja Mart is happy to hire her for the gristmill of data entry and though the pay is shit, it's a job that will keep her in the tiny apartment in a not-quite-terrible neighborhood on the edge of downtown where she has lived throughout her college years. She stays while all of her friends go, to graduate school and to marriage and to live lives somewhere that is not here and while she would like to resent their luck, she just lets the drudgery of putting one foot in front of the other begin to bury her natural inquisitiveness under the piles of bills that are her responsibility.
The pretty, foolish jeweled box is rarely opened. The letter she keeps in a drawer in her cubicle, the old-fashioned blue wax seal still unbroken. In the artificial glare and glow of the computer monitor, her sable brown hair grows ragged and slightly unkempt, her skin pales, and she hears the echo of her Grandfather's voice from childhood, her knees and elbows dirty from playing amongst the chickens, her whiskey gold eyes with their long, curling dark lashes bright on his face, 'Hiding your light under a bushel, punkin.'
She misses the sun.
A wave of layoffs and setbacks for Joja Mart send shockwaves through the cubicle rats. Tess has seniority, of a sort, but that also means she is entitled to more salary than some new kid straight out of college. At twenty-eight, in a non-rent controlled apartment that she can barely afford, Tess sits among the few treasures she possesses and thinks, desperately, of escape. The tidy brownstone where she grew up is gone, as is the fishing shack and the boat and the classic 'vette, all sold, and she wonders if there is anywhere left to go.
If she even has the energy to care.
One day, sitting at her desk and contemplating a collection letter from a hospital she's never heard of and the rumor of another possible pink slip, she finds the wax seal crumbling under her fingers, Grandfather's neat, square, old-fashioned penmanship somehow as familiar as her own bitten nails. For a moment, she hears his voice, slow and deep and careful. Relief is like a tsunami and she even manages a ghost of a smile when she gives her two weeks. The muscles of her face ache at the unfamiliar expression, but it's a good pain.
Ten boxes hold all of her worldly possessions. She has them shipped ahead of her, along with her bicycle, to the farm (Meadowbrooke, she thinks with a shiver of hope and dread), but the little jeweled box and the letter are wrapped carefully in non-reactive tissue paper and stowed in the backpack she is carrying when she steps off the bus in the cool, crisp air.
The pretty redhead who meets her at the bus stop introduces herself as Robin, the local carpenter. She has a lovely, sharply-boned face, kind eyes, and the hand that shakes Tess's is roughened and callused. Tess likes her immediately, particularly her gently encouraging smile when Tess sees just how much work is ahead of her to make the farm habitable, much less profitable. It is clear from the brush and the trees and the tumbled stones that no one has cared for the land since Grandfather. Tess supposes she could always run back to the city but, really, what's there but more heartache? Here, at least, is something she can do.
Mayor Lewis, for all his bluster, is just as welcoming as Robin. His silver mustache twitches at Tess's discomfiture when he mentions everyone in town has been asking after her, the new girl in town, and she wonders how small the community has to be that one new person can set the whole place aflutter. Small, she realizes, and close, because Mayor Lewis scolds Robin like a recalcitrant, well-loved child when she makes a deprecating remark about the admittedly rough and tumble cabin where Tess is expected to live. Robin just laughs, a hearty guffaw, and Tess hides her own bemusement by turning away, something clenching hard in her gut.
The two bicker behind her, something about house upgrades and carpentry work, Robin still laughing even as she pretends to be chastised, the Mayor's squint letting her know he's on to her shenanigans, while Tess tries to find her feet. The work doesn't scare her, she's worked hard before if, she has to admit, not against or with the elements, and the smallness of the town is a relief after the squawk and bray of the city. Maybe she can even have animals here, a dog or a pig or some chickens pecking and clucking busily, and she is so busy building barns in the sky she nearly misses the Mayor and Robin's wishes of good luck and sweet dreams.
"Tomorrow you ought to explore the town a bit and introduce yourself," the Mayor says, an order she is not inclined to ignore even if she preferred solitude, as she will need essentials like bread and sugar and lightbulbs, so she lifts her hand in a friendly wave as the two climb into the Mayor's shiny red pickup.
She unpacks only the jeweled box and the letter before climbing into the rickety single bed, dropping into a restless sleep full of uneasy dreams.
The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy fights the sigh and whistle of the wind for most of the night.