The puzzle had been sitting in the attic long enough to gather a second skin of dust, as if the years were trying to bury it without a goodbye. Clara found it on a Friday afternoon while searching for a box of Christmas lights. The attic was more frigid than the rooms below and the air felt thinner than usual. Beneath her old dance costumes she found a wooden square box, the sharp corners rounded with age. On the box was an image of a garden in the summer; roses, greenery, and a gold bench directly in the center. Upon the box was a yellowish-white paper, Clara Marie scribed in blue ink. Clara picked up the box between her hands and carried it downstairs, each step causing the worn out wood to moan in protest.
That evening she spread the pieces across the dining room table. Each piece was slightly yellow along the edges, and carried the faint scent of cedar. She worked at the pieces urging them to slip together and for a while it seemed as though none could fit. Then one piece popped neatly into the other, causing a satisfying click. Soon the garden began to form. A patch of sky. The curve of a rose bush. The edge of the bench. As the image pulled together, so did her memories with her grandmother. Them getting ice cream after her first swim meet, her Grandmother picking her up from school and taking her shopping, and sitting in the living room working on puzzles together as they talked about their days.
Her grandmother had always loved puzzles. Clara remembered sitting at the same table, her grandmother’s wrinkled hands sorting each piece with a practiced precision, as if she remembered exactly where they belonged. She didn’t remember her grandmother ever struggling. By midnight there were only a handful of pieces left. Then Clara noticed it. One piece was missing.
First she searched beneath the table, her knees scratching along the grooves of the wooden paneled floors. Nothing. Then each chair. Nothing. She checked the box, shaking it side to side. Nothing.
The next morning she searched the kitchen. Nothing.
By the weekend each drawer was emptied and scoured. Nothing. She had found buttons, old photographs, and the homework her dog supposedly ate, but no puzzle piece. On Sunday, Clara went to the attic. She searched every dusty space, from the cardboard boxes, to the baskets of old clothes. At last, she picked up a pink notebook and skimmed through the pages. A thin black and white image glided to the floor, it was an image of her grandmother, sitting on the bench. She looked younger than Clara remembered.
Clara ran down the stairs, the house silent apart from the pitter-padder of her steps. She compared the image to the one of the unfinished puzzle. The garden was the same, except in her grandmother’s photograph the roses had grown too long, pushing past the edges of the bench. For the first time, Clara wondered if the puzzle has ever truly been complete. She almost gave up there and then, reaching for the box to put the puzzle away. Instead she pushed it towards her windowsill, where the light painted lines across the old table. The empty space caught in the sunlight. At that moment, Clara realized she had mistaken the absence for emptiness. Clara left the puzzle where it was. She never searched for the missing piece again and each time she passed by the puzzle, she thought of her grandmother.
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