In the Details

Anthea hated dusting.

Truly, of all the mundane domestic tasks she had been charged with since her parents had begun their new business venture of buying and flipping abandoned houses; dusting was the absolute worst. The “deal” had been that if Anthea agreed to help her parents with cleaning up these houses for reselling, she could keep anything “cool” that was found inside them. Anthea had agreed; images of lost diamond rings behind radiators and forgotten stacks of cash beneath floorboards flooding her decision making. Unfortunately the most exciting things that had been unearthed after an entire summers worth of relentless toil on Anthea’s part were some fantastically boring old books, some random rusty pieces of silverware, and what Anthea thought was a Monopoly piece, but her mother had informed her was a thimble…whatever that was. The last several months’ worth of neglect to her social life and hard labor she had put into these musty old houses were, in Anthea’s opinion, a complete waste of time.

Anthea sighed loudly & moodily as she poked the end of the duster across yet another ugly built-in bookshelf, but the room behind her gave no response. A muffled thumping above told her that her father was putting some finishing touches on the chimney. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was close enough to be the target of her obvious displeasure and saw her mother on a ladder working to install a light fixture in the kitchen; hands in the air, trying to hook one corner of the light to the ceiling.

“What is the point of this?” Anthea demanded, as she watched another cascade of fine dust leave the shelf that she was currently dragging the duster across and hit the already cleaned floor.

Anthea’s mother looked down from her project, hands still up in the air, she rolled her eyes. “The difference is in the details, Thea.” There was an unmistakable tone of impatience in Anthea’s mothers voice; understandable, since the first viewing for the house would be tomorrow morning. “People viewing the house are going to notice if the shelves are covered in dust, and we want this place move-in ready.”

Anthea mouthed the last sentence along with her mother. “See mom, I do get that, because you’ve actually said it a couple hundred times.” Anthea responded, with mock understanding. “But dusting is a complete waste of time. You just push the dirt around to places you’ve already cleaned so you have to go back and clean them all over again. So, I repeat: what is the point of this?” She held the duster aloft, sending visible particles flying between them for emphasis.

Anthea’s mom closed her eyes and took a breath, willing the patience into her response. “I’ve really tried with you today Anthea. We’re all tired. Just get the job done whatever way you want. Okay? Find some singing woodland creatures to help you out; as long as everything is clean, I really don’t care how you do it.”

“Thank you.” Anthea said brightly, willfully ignoring her mothers’ sarcasm, and dropping the duster with great dislike into her parents’ tool bag, watching it puff dust on the contents with petty satisfaction.

Anthea headed down the front hallway, out the front door, taking the steps two at a time and yanked open the car trunk. She reached inside and grabbed the vacuum, pulling it from the car, the long hose trailing behind it. She went to close the trunk but saw the box of vacuum attachments; a series of oblong and bizarre pieces that she had never touched before because, well, they all seemed like pointless extra work. On a disagreeable impulse, she grabbed the box. “The difference is in the details! We want this place move-in ready!” she mimicked aloud in her mother’s voice.

“What did you say, hun?” Anthea’s dad poked his head up around the chimney. Bits of leaves and pine needles were sticking out of his hair and he looked like he wasn’t having the easiest time balancing on whatever was beneath him.

“Just rallying the local woodland creatures. Don’t mind me.” Anthea said dryly, waving him off. “Okay…well good luck with that. Uh, hey, could you send your mom out here for a second?” he said, attempting to sound casual. Anthea nodded and her father’s head disappeared back around the chimney. She heard something small and metallic slide down the roof and hit the ground on the other side of the house and her father swore under his breath. Smiling to herself at the sound of her dad’s predicament, Anthea headed back inside.

The vacuum, hose, and various cleaning attachments clattered noisily to the ground back inside the house.

“What was that?” her mother’s voice called from the kitchen with concern, and just a bit of accusation that Anthea did not care for.

“Oh, that? Probably just dad falling off the roof.” Anthea responded.

“That’s not funny.” Her mom called back, disapprovingly.

“He said he needs your help.” Anthea said as she went about plugging in the vacuum and opening the box of ridiculous looking attachments.

Anthea heard the sound of her mother climbing down off the ladder in the kitchen and leaving the house. She expected further comment from her mother as she passed by, but got none.

She really must be tired, Anthea thought to herself.

The front door squeaked shut behind her mother as Anthea settled on a long, thin, angled plastic piece as her weapon of choice. Affixing it to the end of the vacuum, Anthea put her dingy sneakered toe on top of the vacuum’s power button and let her ears adjust for a minute as it screamed to life.

Anthea walked over to the nearest corner of the room, crouched, pushed the end of the vacuum hose under the radiator, and began to drag the howling machine along the length of the wall. The novelty of the vacuum attachment piece wore off quickly as she worked room by room. Prodding around, sucking up cobwebs and sheetrock dust, hitting something too large to be vacuumed up once or twice but upon checking what it was with a glimmer of excitement, Anthea found it was only a screw or a rogue hair clip from the previous occupants.

Approaching the bottom left of the bookshelf, Anthea slid the vacuum along. Poking it into the corners of the wood paneled shelves, passing over the few spots that were inexplicably too stubborn to allow themselves to be vacuumed up. Avoiding one terrified spider as it made a mad dash for escape from the end of her hose in the final shelf on the top right; too grossed out to pick it up, but not cold hearted enough to kill it, Anthea held the vacuum in place against the back of the top right shelf and waited for the little brown spider to vacate with mild interest.

As the spider approached the end of the shelf and began to suspend itself down by its web to the ground, she noticed it was actually headed straight for her shoe below. She quickly jerked to move her foot in a moment of what she knew was childish panic; an embarrassingly high pitch squeak escaping her mouth that made her grateful for the screeching from the vacuum. As she did, she lost her footing slightly and fell forward toward the shelf in front of her. A crack sounded out, audible even over the vacuum in her hand. Looking up with dread, she saw that the entire back panel of the top shelf had given way, tearing through the fresh coat of paint, detaching itself from the shelf, and falling inside the wall.

Anthea couldn’t believe it. All this for a stupid spider?!

Glancing down, she saw the offender had landed safely and was skittering across the floor, heading for the refuge of the closest radiator. Looking up in desperate frustration, Anthea tried to assess the damage. Maybe she would be able to fix it before her mom came back inside? But as she looked closer, her confidence did not improve. She got out her phone, turned on the flashlight, and shined it down inside the wall; she could see the broken panel sitting just inside. Anthea reached in to pull out the wooden panel, thinking perhaps if she was lucky, she could just wedge it back in place. Once having pulled out the panel she saw that just underneath it, sitting inside the wall, was another object. She set the wooden piece down and reached her hand back in the wall, farther this time, and grasped at the unknown object. It was flat, no more than an inch thick. Trying not to think about the spiders that were almost certainly living in there, she pulled her hand out to take a better look at the object.

It was a small, black book.

Great, Anthea thought to herself, another fantastically boring old book to add to my collection.

Tossing it onto the ground she heard the fluttering of paper sliding across the floor but ignored it. She picked the detached wooden board back up again and looked at it. It was strange; for a broken off piece of wood, it didn’t actually seem broken. There were no nails attached to it, not even a hole where one might have been. She lifted it back up to the top shelf and slid one end into place, it clicked into place neatly. She then pushed on the other side, this one more resisting, and hit it several times impatiently with her open palm. This side too clicked into place and; were she just slightly less rushed from the worry that her mom would walk in at any moment with a shower of questions and accusations regarding how she managed to break an otherwise completely sturdy part of the house the night before perspective buyers came in… Anthea might have heard the distinct clicking sound of a lock mechanism as the board popped back in to place.

Stepping back and looking at her work, she didn’t see how anyone could have possibly noticed that she had broken anything. Taking a deep breath of relief for the lecture she knew she had just avoided, she looked down again. The cause of the sound she had earlier ignored was immediately apparent to her. There were four pieces of paper scattered about the floor at her feet, but they were not regular paper. They were a light, faded green. All four had the number 5000 printed in the corners, and there were pictures of the same man with a high collar and puffy white hair printed on each of them.

Anthea bent down to pick one up and looked more closely at the man, beneath his picture was printed the name “Madison”, and farther beneath this were the words “FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS” in bold, block text. Anthea vaguely remembered having learned in U.S. History that there was once money printed as high as ten thousand dollar bills and they had long since been recalled by the government, but there were still some out there.

A prickling feeling ran down Anthea’s arms, warming her fingertips. She picked up each of the other pieces of paper and found they were all identical; each a perfect $5000 bill, labeled as having been printed in the year 1936. But this wasn’t possible, was it?

Anthea picked up the notebook and leafed through it, finding scratched on the very first page: “Just in case. -V”

The squeaking sound of a door handle alerted her to her parents coming back inside. She was distantly aware of them both shuffling, exhausted, up to her; sitting there on the ground with $20,000 worth of antique U.S. bills in her hands.

"Where did you find those?!” her mother asked, disbelief in her voice.

Anthea looked up at her parents’ shocked faces and grinned.

She shrugged casually, “In the details?”