Grandpa's Trunk

One rainy afternoon, while they waited for their parents to come pick them up, Marco and Chiara decided to explore Grandpa Renato’s attic, a place that was usually off-limits without an adult’s permission.

Among dusty boxes and old broken chairs, they found a dark wooden trunk, locked with a big rusty padlock. Carved by hand on the lid were the initials “R.B.”

“Those are Grandpa’s initials!” Chiara exclaimed, running a finger over the letters worn by time.

“Let’s go ask him what’s inside,” said Marco, already halfway down the stairs.

They found Grandpa Renato in the kitchen, making hot chocolate. When they told him about the trunk, his face lit up in a way they had never seen before.

“That trunk,” he said, slowly setting down the spoon, “I haven’t opened it in more than thirty years.”

“Why is it locked?” asked Chiara. “Where’s the key?”

Grandpa smiled, mysterious.

“There’s only one way to find it,” he said. “The very same game I invented for your mom, when she was your age. Give me five minutes, then I’ll give you the first clue.”

The two siblings waited impatiently in the living room, while Grandpa quietly vanished through the house. When he came back, sitting down between them with a solemn air, he pulled out a folded slip of paper.

“First clue,” he read aloud. “ ‘I’m warm only in winter, but every evening you’ll find me ready to be lit.’ “

Marco and Chiara looked at each other, thinking together.

“The fireplace!” they shouted in unison, running toward the next room.

Above the fireplace mantel, they found the second slip, tucked behind an old family photo.

“Second clue,” Marco read: “ ‘Every morning you open me first, and every evening you close me last.’ “

Chiara thought hard for a while, then her face lit up.

“The front door!”

They ran to the entryway, and there, tucked into the pocket of the old coat hanging on the rack, they found the third and final clue.

“ ‘I guard your secrets at night, and every morning you find them right where you left them,’ “ Chiara read, frowning. “What could that be?”

“Your pillow?” Marco suggested, unsure.

“No, wait,” Chiara said slowly. “Maybe… the nightstand drawer!”

They ran upstairs to the guest room, where Marco and Chiara slept whenever they stayed the night at Grandpa’s, and opened the nightstand drawer. At the very back, wrapped in a cloth handkerchief, they finally found a small brass key.

They returned to the attic in triumph, where Grandpa was waiting, seated beside the trunk. With hands trembling slightly from excitement, Marco slid the key into the rusty padlock, which sprang open with a sharp click after so many years of silence.

Inside, they found no gold treasure or jewels, as Marco had perhaps secretly hoped. Instead, they found a tidy pile of faded notebooks, pencil drawings of ships and dinosaurs, and a bundle of letters tied with string.

“These are my drawings, from when I was Marco’s age,” Grandpa explained, carefully leafing through an old notebook. “And these letters, I used to write them to my brother, when he went to live in another city.”

Chiara carefully lifted a black-and-white photograph that had slipped out of a notebook: it showed a smiling little girl, sitting right in front of that very same trunk.

“Grandpa, that’s not you,” she said, confused.

“No,” he replied, his eyes suddenly glistening. “That’s your mom, the day she played this exact same game, and found this exact same key.”

Marco and Chiara exchanged an astonished look, picturing their mom as a little girl, sitting in the very spot where they were sitting now.

“One day,” Grandpa said, carefully closing the trunk but leaving the key on the table beside them, “it will be your turn to hide this key again, for someone else.”

When their parents came to pick them up that evening, they found Marco and Chiara sitting side by side on the sofa, taking turns telling, their eyes still full of wonder, every single clue of the best game they had ever played.