The Perfect Gift
- Cristina Farinas
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
A short story by Cristina Farinas
On her 77th birthday, Margaret Allen-Dagostino sat alone in her living room. Her husband, Edwin, had passed two years earlier, and their son, Steven, lived across the country in Connecticut. Margaret didn’t mind being alone though. At her age, every sunrise felt like a gift.
She opened each of the cards which had trickled in through the mail. She preferred to save them all for “the big day” then savor each, one by one. A cup of tea sat on the small table beside her reclining chair, and she sipped the Earl Grey slowly as she read well-wishes from friends and family, shared memories and scrawled writing tugging a smile to her lips time and again.
The doorbell rang unexpectedly, startling Margaret. She set her tea down, righted the chair, and went to the front door. On the sunflower welcome mat sat a plain box — no sender, no delivery van in sight, just a blank white label.
Margaret hesitated, then carried the box inside. At the dining table, she opened it and gasped.
Who could have sent this?
She felt tears prick her eyes and took a steadying breath. Then she reached into the box and drew out each of the seven items one by one.
The first was a pressed rose. Margaret closed her eyes, inhaling the scent that still lingered. My heart raced when Greg asked me to senior prom. He was the perfect gentleman, from the moment he put the corsage on my wrist to the minute he returned me home, even shaking Daddy’s hand at the door. She giggled remembering how mad she had been when her father lingered at the door forcing Greg to walk back to his car without giving her a proper goodnight kiss.
Next, she drew out of the box a silver locket, a photo of her on one side and of her mother on the other. It felt heavier in her hands than she remembered. I swore I’d lost this! Momma was gone so suddenly, and I was just seventeen. Daddy, lost in his grief. She had been so alone after her Mother’s death, had needed someone — anyone — to fill that empty space.
Greg had been there, the two of them the quintessential high school couple. He had filled that hole in her heart. Next, Margaret retrieved a matchbook out of the box. She traced the lettering on the cover. Abe’s Place. A diner. Where we always went after a football game or Saturday dance. Greg and I had such good times there with our friends, drinking every new milkshake flavor Abe concocted and dancing by the jukebox until closing. She laughed, remembering the comical faces Greg always made when Mick Jagger sang about getting no satisfaction.
Those good times didn’t last though. Margaret ran her finger along the edge of the hospital bracelet before taking it out of the box. I was so young, she thought. Too young to be a mother. A baby having a baby. And Greg… Tears still pricked the backs of her eyes when she thought about his reaction. “I’m too young to be a father,” he had said, and disappeared from her life as quietly and quickly as she had disappeared from her baby’s after the adoption. Samantha, I hope you’ve had a wonderful life.
A few years later Margaret met Edwin. She looked at the ticket stub for the concert where they’d met. Edwin, in his clumsy way, had literally walked into her while looking for his friends. He spent the entire concert following her around to make sure she had everything she needed, his way of apologizing. The love of my life. We snuck up a ladder to the rooftop beside the stage, just in time to hear “Whole Lotta Love”.
When she and Edwin became engaged, she told him about the baby she had put up for adoption. The child would have been six. With Edwin’s support and encouragement, Margaret wrote a letter to Samantha to cope with her grief. She never sent it. Didn’t even know it had survived until she saw the envelope at the bottom of the box.
Margaret opened the letter slowly and read: My sweet, Samantha. I love you more than you can ever imagine. Giving you up was the most heart-wrenching decision I’ve ever made. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you. She read the letter twice, tears blurring the words. She hadn’t been able to send it to the adoption agency, guilt-racked at choosing her life over raising her child.
She read the letter one more time then put it aside. She reached into the box for the last item, a beaded bracelet, the kind children make in school, with the initials SA. Her heart skipped. Could it be? She traced the beads. No one knew she had given the baby a name. Except Edwin and the adoption agency. Surely whoever adopted her had given her a different name. She turned the bracelet over and over in her hands wondering how it had come to be in the box. Who could have sent all of these items?
As she looked over all the mementos she had pulled from the box, the doorbell rang. She shuffled to the door and opened it. On her front porch stood her son, Steven, short hair starting to gray at the temples, blue eyes twinkling with joy. Behind him stood a woman with auburn hair and the same blue eyes. Margaret gasped. Looking at the woman was like looking at a younger version of herself.
“Surprise!” Steven said. “I hope you got the box.” He grasped the woman’s hand. “I think you probably know who this is. Samantha wanted to surprise you for your birthday.”
Margaret pulled Steven into a hug and reached for Samantha’s hand. “It’s the very best birthday gift I’ve ever received.”
Cristina Farinas is a Florida-based poet and fiction writer whose work explores conservation and self-discovery. Published internationally, she thrives on short story competitions. When not writing, she enjoys hiking, photography, and blogging at Wander Florida. She lives with her son and a mischievous cat named Cookie.
Images:
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So touching and a pleasant read
This is a lovely story, well-written and, although not a mystery, intriguing as one wonders what will be next in that box and who might have left it outside the door.
What a sweet ending.