Envelopes

James wished he’d never checked the mail that day. Perhaps if he hadn’t checked the mail, he wouldn’t have found the small black moleskine notebook. And if he hadn’t found the notebook, he would still be completely unaware of his father.

The notebook didn’t arrive the way the money did. A month ago James had opened his mailbox to find a nondescript envelope with no address, return address, or writing of any kind filled with $5000. James remembered the feeling of finding that much money as he opened the envelope with his other mail. He’d stuck his finger in an opening in the corner, slid it underneath the flap, and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he realized it was an envelope full of a mix of ten, twenty, and one hundred dollar bills. These weren’t the kind of bills from a bank either. They weren’t crisp, never been used bills but wavy, torn, dingy bills. In fact they looked as though they might have gotten wet at one time or another.

“Who would send this kind of money?” James wondered, the creepy feeling intensifying as he realized that whoever gave him the money hadn’t mailed it. They knew where he lived. There was no address- they had to have dropped it off in person.

The realization unsettled James so much that seconds later he’d found himself at the window, peering out from his curtains, suddenly certain that the envelope offender was right outside watching his house. Yet no one was there. No one was there any of the times that night or the rest of the week when he found himself once again standing to the side of the living room window staring out at his banal suburban street. In fact, he’d found himself at the window more and more as the week went on, especially after he’d called his relatives and any friend who’d ever owed him money with no results.

However, over time the hairs stopped tingling the back of James’s neck whenever he checked the mail, and after three weeks he’d completely forgotten about the money at all. The money simply lived in an empty shoe box at the back of his closet out of sight and out of mind.

Then four weeks to the day from the incident of the first envelope, James found another nondescript envelope filled again with $5000. Unlike the first envelope though, there had been writing on the second. There was a series of instructions inscribed on the inside flap of the envelope. Sweat dampened his brow as he desperately tried to hold the flap together, having accidentally torn it this time around. After much effort, James had been able to read:

The goal is to find the notebook: a small, 4 inch black moleskine notebook.

First, go to the house you grew up in.

Second, look in the hole of the old birch tree, long since chopped down, the one that used to hold your tree house.

James flung the envelope in the back of his closet along with the original, saying, “No. NO. No. No. Enough is enough. No envelopes. No money. No cryptic instructions. Just no.” It hadn’t stopped him, however, from spending the entire night on the floor of his living room sitting just underneath the window sill and looking out the corner hoping for a glimpse of the mysterious envelope-leaver.

It also hadn’t stopped him after a week of looking over shoulder and refusing to get the mail from ultimately pulling up to the house he’d grown up in. The house was a traditional yellow house with white brick. It looked different since his mom had sold it a few years before, checking herself into a retirement community to “meet people her own age,” she’d said. Whoever lived in the house now had cleaned it up, planted rosebushes.

James remembered reminding himself that he had to be quick. If he found the events surrounding the envelopes to be creepy, he could only imagine how the new owners would view his prowling. He walked straight to the old birch tree, now sans the treehouse as the envelope mentioned. He looked for the hole he remembered. He and his neighborhood friends had hidden treasures in that hole once upon a time. Inside the hole was yet another envelope and nothing else.

James didn’t open the envelope until he got back home. Inside was the same amount as the first two and a new note.

Good work!

One last challenge to find the notebook.

Go to the park with the swings.

Find the same type of birch tree.

Dig for the answers.

James had not been pleased at the thought of digging in a public park, but he had gone this far and had known that would have to finish the game. He also had begun to suspect that the party leaving these clues was his father, whom he hadn’t seen since he’d been at that park 25 years before swinging on the very swings mentioned on the envelope. His father had said he’d meet James back home and never did.

This was how James had found himself sitting on the floor of his living room covered in dirt after digging up much of a public park in the middle of the night. He sat staring at the final envelope, another $5000, and a small black moleskine notebook. The only writing on the inside flap of the notebook appeared to be the address for a cemetery, complete with plot number. When he’d gone to the cemetery after the park, he’d found his father’s headstone. The small black notebook had been sitting on top.

After skimming its contents, James had realized that his father had written him sporadic letters in the notebook since he’d left him at the park that day. He turned to the final letter, dated one year to the day before James had received the first envelope.

Dear Jimmy,

If you’re reading this, the lung cancer finally got me. I’m sorry we didn’t have more time, Son.

You’re an adult now, so maybe you’ll be ready to understand when you read this. Maybe this notebook will have helped. I may not have been there, but I wanted you to know I thought of you all the time.

I know it was the coward’s way, leaving that park with no intention of seeing you back at home. It just wasn’t going to work between your mom and me. I was stuck, trapped. I simply couldn’t stay. I only hope you are able live a life free of those feelings. I hope you’ll do better than me and turn out to be something more than a man dying of cancer and only regrets to keep him company.

I’m sorry I didn’t get to know you or the man you’ve become. I hope this notebook helps you know me. I hope the money provides some comfort.

Love,

Dad

James swallowed hard as he finished the letter. He wished he could swallow down all the feelings- anger, bitterness, sadness. He knew he’d read the notebook one day. It was all he had left of his father. But he wished he’d never found the money or the notebook. He preferred the hope he’d had of seeing his dad again to a notebook full of snippets of the man who’d left him when he was six.

James pulled himself off the floor of the living room and deposited the last of the money and the notebook in the shoe box with the rest. Then he washed the dirt from the night from his hands, watching the last of it slip down the drain, and thought of all the dirt weighing his father down.