Taylor Oliver

An Unbreakable Bond

Caroline wore black in the winter. She mourned her beloved great grandfather, who had just recently passed. A lifetime of wisdom, memories and a great deal of belongings left behind. Shortly after his passing, Caroline was put in charge by her family to go to her great grandfather's home and sort out his personal affects, left to decide which items fell under the categories: keep, throw away, or donate. That was simple enough. Caroline had always been one to take on a tedious project. She'd worked clerical jobs most her life and was often found doing research on various topics for recreation in her leisure, spending more time in the nonfiction section of the library than anywhere else. As Caroline entered her great grandfather's 1910s built home, there was a weight in the air. Standing still for a moment she inhaled the must of old books and the smell of the earthy wooden walls that surrounded her, eyes fixated on dust particles suspended weightlessly in a beam of sunlight coming from a nearby window. She exhaled, squeezed her great grandfather's old, iron house key in the palm of her cold hands and closed the door behind her. Venturing further into his house she made her way to his office that contained towering stacks of boxes filled with old files, piles of unevenly placed papers, scrapbooks, photographs and the like. Unfinished projects had already begun to form dust. She meticulously examined the pages of each document, before moving onto his books. He had always had such an impressive collection. The personal library in his home office donned a hand carved mahogany bookcase that spanned from floor to ceiling, containing weathered hardcover literary classics, philosophical texts and rare collections of Shakespeare's works. This is where Caroline first fell in love with reading. Fond memories she hadn't recollected since her youth, all at once, flooded back to her. As a girl, she'd sit cross legged at the foot of that skyscraping bookshelf and read for hours, tuning out the sound of laughter from her siblings playing just outside of those very walls.