‘Hope Chest’, short fiction.

Win is 91, a self-made woman, who takes pride in her self-sufficiency and the fact she can still play a mean game of tennis. But one day in summer, her past resurfaces when her hope chest is reopened for the first time since it was hidden away in the 1940’s.

Short extract:

“The heat was pouring in trickles from Win’s cloth sunhat, down her freckled forehead and the furrows of her sun-browned neck. Her eyes were fixed on the trowel in the dark earth, her gloved hands were fixed on swivelling the trowel, her back was bent to the task of keeping the swivels strong and even. The earth released, in heady scents, all the livelinesses hidden in its depths. Her knees were pressed into the soft earth, staining her cotton pants with a satisfying dirtiness that she would later wash out by hand in foaming suds.”