Chapter 5.

On the drive back to town, Rick developed a headache and decided to go home. He put the symptoms down to the beer and hard work. Jim lazed around in town until early afternoon before finally heading home, where he went straight to his room, put on some music, and stretched out on the bed.

A restlessness slowly set in, more bothersome than boredom, that neither the TV nor game console could satisfy. He retrieved the box, examined it, and quickly concluded that Rick's classification of the morning as a ‘big waste of time’ had been accurate.

In the bathroom, he ran warm water over the box. Faded shapes began to appear — crosses, animals, and unfamiliar symbols. He cleared stubborn patches of dirt with his toothbrush and soon had the box as clean as he was prepared to spend time making it.

He held it up to the bathroom light. The wood, dull and damp, bore no signs of damage. After shaking, tapping, twisting, and sniffing, he gave up on finding a lid.

At the limit of his investigative know-how, he sat down at his computer and searched for ‘small wooden box.’ He scanned the list of matches – cigar boxes, urns, music boxes — endless possibilities. One item caught his eye:

Buy Wooden Puzzle Boxes.

He clicked on the link and spent the next few hours becoming much more knowledgeable on puzzle boxes than your average Northern Irish youth.

By early evening, he was satisfied that they had found antique puzzle boxes. The best news, based on wildly optimistic assumptions about age, condition, and origin, was that they might be worth a few hundred pounds.

He called Rick with the good news. Rick was out. His mother took a message. After a few minutes, the phone rang.

It was Cara. She did not feel well and did not want to go out for the evening. She said goodnight before Jim could grovel for any compromise. Despondent, he left the house.

Although Cara had not dumped his sorry ass as Rick had predicted, all indicators pointed in one indisputable direction: they were finished.

As he wandered around his neighborhood, his mood darkened. Eventually, the pain of anticipated separation grew to a point where its proportions bore no relation to the ten days and three dates that summed up their affair.

That night he lay in bed, unable to sleep. Two miles away, Cara slept soundly. She had been tense earlier in the evening, dreading another night of nightmares. However, the unease of the previous night and an anxiousness that had continued to rise and fall for most of the day suddenly lifted, leaving no hint of an aftertaste. She was well again, and sleep came quickly.