George’s Hidden Will

“Georgie?”

My mother’s voice drifted down the hall and found me sitting upon my grandpa George’s desk chair in his office. The room had always felt warm and inviting. The Turmeric colored walls were barely visible behind the stacks of bookcases that lined the room. Since his death the emptiness of the room was almost unbearable. In an attempt to keep my tears at bay I glanced up at the ceiling. A single fan over the desk seemed to float amongst the mural of cherubs flying through clouds. The beauty of it never ceased to amaze me.

“Georgie? Where are you?”

“In here,” I called out, for once not minding being named after my grandfather.

“What are you doing in here?” My mom asked as she slowly entered the room.

“I wanted to feel close to him, one last time.”

Mom walked over to me and wrapped herself around me as she sat upon the arm of the chair. Her thick curls of flaxen hair fell over me as she rested her head upon my shoulder. Tears fell down my cheeks as we held each other for several moments. When mom pulled away a sad smile crossed her face as she wiped my tears away with her fingers.

“Are you ready to see the lawyer?” I asked.

“What’s the point?” She asked with a scoff. “We can’t find your grandfather’s will and without that everything he owned goes to Rosalind.”

Rosalind was a home nurse who’d come and check on my grandfather every week when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago. At first it seemed like Rosalind really cared about my grandpa but after they were married it became increasingly clear that all she wanted was my grandfather’s money. It became so apparent that in the end even my grandpa saw that Rosalind’s main feature was greed.

In the last month of his life my grandfather was still doing really well. He had been enjoying himself and moving around close to the way he used to. It was because of this that my mother and I had started to hope that maybe grandpa could beat this. His sudden rapid decline of health and talk of the end made us quickly realize that it had been a fools hope.

“Grandpa said he made a will to make sure that everything would be taken care of. He didn’t want Rosalind to get it all either.”

“Then where is the will?” Mom asked.

I sighed in frustration. “He didn’t want to leave it somewhere that Rosalind could find it. And apparently leaving it with a lawyer was too much to ask for.”

“Apparentl,” Mom said sarcastically. “He never did trust lawyers after your Uncle Jimmy conned him out of two thousand dollars.”

“Grandpa should’ve known better. Uncle Jimmy lost his license to practice law because of his shady dealings. His get rich quick schemes never work.”

“That’s true,” Mom said with a soft laugh. “They never do.”

Mom and I stayed there in comfortable silence for a while. It felt good to sit together in a room that my grandfather had loved so much. For most of his life grandpa loved to research his family history and learn everything he could about it. He would spend hours and hours in here. Often he would tell me that when he was stressed from life he would just lean back in his chair and gaze up at the ceiling....

“The ceiling!”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Mom asked as she attempted to not fall off the chair from my outburst.

I hopped up from my seat and began to climb onto the chair. “Think about it. Grandpa was always saying that his favorite thing to do when he was stressed was to look up at the mural in here.”

A dawned expression crossed Mom’s face. “Is it possible he hid it in the fan?”

“Where else would it be?”

“I suppose you have a point,” Mom said, quietly. “Just be careful.”

“I will.”

From the chair I climbed onto Grandpa’s desk. It’s sturdy construction easily held me up. I stood up tall and ran my fingers over the blades of the fan. After several moments of fumbling around I felt pangs of disappointment rise with me. I stood up on my tip-toes, craning my neck to see what I’d already suspected. Nothing but dust.

“It’s okay,” my mom said gently.

My shoulders hung heavy in dismay. I had been so sure that I’d figured it out that discovering I was wrong was nearly too hard to bear. I glanced around the room in an attempt to keep myself from crying when suddenly something caught my eye. I walked across the desk and once I got to the edge I leaned over to the closest bookcase. After a moment of fumbling I retrieved a small black notebook that had been sitting on the top, pushed far to the back where no one could see it from the ground.

“What was your grandfather’s journal doing up there?” Mom asked.

“I’m not sure.”

I held the notebook firmly in my hands as I carefully climbed down from the desk. Once my feet were firmly on the floor. I took a closer look at the journal and saw that a piece of paper was sticking out of the top of it. I placed the notebook upon the desk before carefully sliding the paper out. Once the paper was unfolded I felt tears of relief fill my eyes. We’d found it, we’d found my Grandfathers will.

A few hours later my mother held the deed to Grandpa’s house and a check for twenty thousand dollars. Grandpa hadn’t made it easy on us but he’d done what he’d promised. He had made sure that Rosalind wouldn’t get a penny out of him. And just think, we never could’ve done it without that little black book.