The Final Gift

I stood sipping hot chamomile tea while browsing books. The book store on Main street had been around for decades and recently renovated the old home video store next door. The expansion of a café ended up being a great addition to the book store, bringing in new costumers and thus salvaging a potentially dying business.

Walking down the aisle of books that boarded the café wall, I searched for one book I could afford to buy today that would have to last the week. Saddened a little that all I could afford was a simple tea and one book, I still felt happy that I could have this little freedom.

A thick red book caught my eye and I picked it up because the bigger the book is, the longer it will last. It was a biography and while I sometimes like to delve into people's lives and stories, today was a day to escape into fiction.

Continuing on towards the back of the store, I took a sip of tea and reminisced about the times my mother used to bring me here as a child. Now an adult, it still was my favorite place to spend my free time. Turning the corner, I caught sight of one of the store owners Mrs. Sheldon. She and her husband have been running the bookstore since my mother was a teenager.

“Hello Maria” I greeted.

“Anna” she said with a warm smile. “I hoped I would see you today. I have something for you.”

I didn’t remember requesting a book to order and coming up blank I queried “You do?”

Mrs. Sheldon motioned me to follow her to the front of the store. “I found an old journal of your mothers. She must have lost it here and it was knocked loose during all the hammering around upstairs.” The second floor of the bookstore had always been a sitting area but the new renovations knocked down a wall and extended the area to include the second floor of the café as well.

Mrs. Sheldon lifted a thin black journal from under the counter and handed it to me. “It has your mother's name on the back of the front cover” she said softly. “I still miss hearing her bright smile, but I'm glad you still come around to remind us of her.”

My mother had gotten sick when I was 15 and died a year later form cancer. Never knowing my father or either grandparents, the Sheldon's had become like family to me since I could always escape to the book store to get away from my foster families.

“Ike found it on the ground after moving bookshelves to tear down the walls upstairs” she said. “Why don’t you take it up there and have a look at it?” With that, she gently touched my arm and walked back down the aisle to continue putting books away.

I could feel my emotions going haywire after the surprise wore off, so with tea and book in hand, I retreated upstairs into a chair and examined this small gift given to me. The fact that it might also contain a hint of who my father was no small thing either. All I know about him is that he died sometime before I was born.

Setting my tea down on the table beside me, I opened the journal and there on the back of the cover was her name. Tears collected in the corners of my eyes because this was indeed my mother's hand writing. My mother wrote this when she was a teenager. It begins with her talking about high school and what she wanted to be in the future. Getting a few pages in, I gleaned that her relationship with her parents and older brother were not great. It seemed she wanted to be a nurse. She would have been a great nurse. The soft mellow voice she had would have soothed the most agitated of patients.

I got so engrossed in reading my mother's thoughts, dreams, wishes that I didn’t even noticed afternoon had come. It was quiet laughter that startled my reading and made me realize time had passed. Almost 2 hours I had been sitting here reading about issues my mother had been having with her family. About pressure she was feeling in school. About wanting something more for her future. I didn’t even notice the people around me.

My tea had long cooled but I still took it with me back downstairs on my way out the door. I wanted to finish reading my mother's memories at home where I could be alone. Maria was checking out a person so I decided to wait until she was done to say goodbye before leaving. After the customer walked off, she spotted me and came around the counter to give me a hug.

“It really was hers, wasn’t it sweetie?” she said as she held me close. I nodded, getting choked up for a minute, I took a step back, and said thank you.

“Thank you for being her place to come to” I said hoarsely as Maria smiled at me. “Oh, stop that now, you know we always loved you and your mother.”

She patted me on the cheek and said “you should let me send you home with some goodies that Ike has been baking”. I shook my head and told her again that I will always pay here. I value the store too much to take money out of their pockets. Giving her one final squeeze, I left the store. The whole day felt different now. The little black notebook had changed the way I have been feeling for months. That it was written by the mom I loved and missed made it feel life changing.

There were a lot of times during these years that I wished I could hear my mother's soothing voice. I could have used her words of wisdom and encouragement when I decided to follow my dream and be a nurse. Anxious to continue reading her journal, I walked a little faster home.

It was only the beginning of afternoon, but knowing I had work tomorrow, I was anxious to finish the journal. I walked into my apartment and decided to eat first. I put the chamomile tea in the microwave to heat up and went about getting the fixings to make a sandwich. Gathering the sandwich up, I grabbed the tea out of the microwave, my mom’s journal, and went into the small living room to settle in for some long reading.

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading the little black journal and It drew me closer to my mother in ways that I never thought I would get to have. Seeing how she had so many thoughts similar and close to my own, comforted me beyond words. Eventually towards the end of the journal when it seemed that my mother would be finishing high school soon, I found out who my father might be. My mother had started working towards the end of her senior year, at the only veterinarian clinic in the area. A boy from a farm outside of town came into the clinic one day to fill a prescription. His name was Joe Turner.

As I read about the dates they went on and how much my mother fell in love with him, I begun to think that this man really might be my father. I paused in my reading because honestly, I was scared. I had never had any family besides my mother. I know that my father is already gone, but for the first time I had a name. I continued reading until her graduation, and by then they were fully in love. The gladness in my heart I had while reading this brought me to tears.

It was after that when I really begin crying. With only a few pages left in the journal, I finally found out how my father died. He went away to the military and never returned. Never having known about me. It seems he died during an accident in basic training. The last sentence in my mother’s journal was that he was never coming home her. I set the book down and cried. For my mother, who lost the love of her life. For my father, who died too young. For myself, for missing out on the family I always wanted.

Night was already beginning to fall by then. I cleaned up and decided to call off work tomorrow and head to bed. I needed to absorb all the new information I had found and this technically counts as a family emergency. I am grieving in a way.

I woke up in the morning, made a pot of coffee, and sat down with the notebook. I thought a lot about what I was going to do next. After thinking things through, I decided to return back to the bookstore. Somehow the thought that Ike and Maria might know something was hard to shake. When I arrived at the bookstore, I saw Maria and Ike in the café behind the counter. Maria saw me and smiled. “Hello Anna, how did the reading go?”

I gave her a weak smile and said “It was surprising, I think I know who my father is and I was wondering if you might know something about him?”

Ike went around the counter and flipped the close sign while Maria came over and motioned me to a table. After sitting me down, they both looked at each other and then Ike said to me that they did indeed think they know who my father is. “Your mother came into the shop a few times with a boy before you were born, Joe Turner. Your mother never seemed to want to talk about him after he died so we never asked” he said.

I nodded and said I believe it was him too. Maria then said the words that killed some little hope that I didn’t know I had. “Honey, his parents died 5 years ago. There was an accident. I’m afraid all his family passed.” She reached across the table and grabbed my hand. Ike got up and grab a small piece of paper from on top of the counter. “Here is the number to their estate. It seems they left some land and a house behind since there was no one to pass it on too. We got the number yesterday.”

Maria told me I could use the phone in the bookstore to make the call and then they both went back to the counter. I walked through the doorway to the bookshop, went to the counter, hesitated than picked up the phone and dialed the number. A man picked up the phone.

“Hello, John speaking.” His said.

“Um hello my name is Anna and I think I may be related Joe Turner and was told to give you call?” I said in a near whisper.

“Well, it's about time” he said with exuberance. “I been waiting for someone to come and claim the estate for years. If you can prove it with DNA, then you're sitting on a nest egg of around $20,000.”

In shock, I almost dropped the phone. I barely remember agreeing on a time to come and take a DNA test that week. I hung up the phone and slowly walked back into the café where Ike and Maria were. They had been waiting on me to return and gave me an expectant look.

“I'm due to inherit $20,000 dollars, if he is my father” I said completely deadpan. The shock still hadn’t worn off.

They looked at each other. Then Maria turned to me and said “Have you ever thought of owning a book store? As you know we have no children and we always said you two were like family.”