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Fifteen Years Ago

BECKETT

“Who wants to go first?” Cole asked

All of us stared at the empty tackle box on ht it over, and I’d taken out all the trays so it could serve a different function

Time capsule

Since ere kids, my three best friends—Cole Mitchell, Griffin De a tih school We’d heard about tirade social studies class, and all four of us agreed then and there that ere going to do it

After soreed that it made the ured anyone else’s faht move someday, but Weaver Ranch had been in my family for over a hundred years and it would be in enerations to come

I was going to make sure of it

My plan was to et an MBA, and secure one of those Wall Street jobs where you could uts, and the work ethic

I had all three, and I’d use them to help my family

“I’ll go,” said Griffin, placing his beat-up backpack on the table and reaching inside it He pulled out his graduation tassels, a photograph of hirandfather in front of the open hood of an old truck they were restoring, and a folded sheet of paper

“What’s that?” Moretti asked, pointing at the paper

“It’s a copy of the letter fro me when and where to report to boot camp”

We nodded and watched Griffin put those three ite out in three weeks for Parris Island, the first of us to leave Bella for Harvard, where I had a full acadee, where he planned to study law enforce full-time for his family’s construction business, as he had since he was fourteen

The last thing Griffin pulled from the backpack was a dirty, scuffed-up baseball “Froainst Mason City High to clinch the title,” he said reverently “I signed it, in case you guys put a baseball in too That e’ll knohose is whose”