The Missing Piece

It had been months since her father’s funeral. Anna sat cross legged on the ground, in the middle of the almost empty room. The scratched and faded wooden floor was cold and hard underneath her, but it seemed to fit her mood perfectly. It had been a long couple of months sorting, tossing, organizing and selling the massive piles of mostly junk that had filled the rooms of the house. When she had first arrived, she had hoped that in the process of going through what he had left behind, she could somehow find things that would make her father less of the stranger he’d always been. Instead, she’d found as much sense and usefulness in most of the items as she’d ever found in her father, which was almost none. She hadn’t found any magic keys that would unlock the mystery of who he was. In fact, she felt further away from him now than she ever had. His death had come to seem like one last ‘Fuck You’ to her. One more mess that wasn’t hers she was expected to clean up, one more scar to try to hide. For the moment, she was just thankful there was still enough work to do to keep her mind from slipping too far down that particular rabbit hole yet.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t loved her father. In fact, most of the time she felt as if she’d loved him too much. He was like so many of the beautiful, unattainable things that live in any little girl’s heart; a soul wish spoken into the darkness each night that would quickly fade and leave nothing behind by morning. Nothing except tender spots that never quite healed. She knew that some of the best parts of herself were the ones that had come from him. It was something she’d been told her entire life. That knowledge had only ever made those tender spots feel raw, highlighting the deep divide that can exist between the intimate sharing of DNA with someone and having an actual relationship with them. She had spent most of her life trying to figure out a way to bridge that gap. Now, it was too late.

Sighing, Anna uncrossed her legs and got up off the floor. “Back to work girl,” she said to herself, eyeing the last pile of odds and ends that took up most of the room. Reluctantly, she picked up a stack of clothes, brought them over to a well-used wooden desk in the corner, and sat in the only chair left in the house. As her hands started folding, she let her mind wander. Her situation was precarious right now, but not troubling. She’d left her job, flown across the country, managed a funeral, settled an estate, and done it all with only three months of savings and no plan of what was next. She supposed that last bit should scare her, but she was actually thankful. If she had to be honest, it felt good to not have anything important to get back to. She had been feeling stuck in…well, everything. She’d always felt herself mired in a life that never seemed to fit quite right, and lately that feeling had gotten worse. Almost unbearable. It genuinely felt good to be able to wake up and work through the tasks of the day with no expectations, no pressure. Under any other circumstances that freedom would make her happy. She would be finished cleaning things up in one more week, the paperwork on the house would be signed settling all the outstanding debts and she could be on her way. Hopefully there’d be no unexpected delays because her savings would only last through the end of the month. After that…who knew?

Grabbing the last pair of pants in the stack, Anna gave them a solid shake, surprised when a little black notebook with well-worn edges fell to the floor. Picking it up, she opened it and thumbed through it briefly. It seemed harmless enough, filled with writing and the occasional picture stuck in the crease of the binding. Tossing it aside and making a mental note to get back to it later, Anna shook out the pants again and got back to work.

Later that evening, after she’d managed to work through a good section of the pile, she ordered a pizza, poured some wine and grabbed the book. Sitting at the desk, slice in hand, Anna took a deep breath. Though she didn’t want to admit it, there was a sense of desperation she had started to feel in the evenings here. The constant low hum of the traffic outside that she could hear throughout the day slowed, the birds and chatter from the neighbors quieted and the house became silent. In those moments, she could feel the last of the hope she had for any of this to start to make sense begin to slip away from her.

Opening the book, she was surprised at the lump in her throat that formed looking at the familiar cursive letters. The words, “Ledger Book”, decorated the middle of the front page. It was the same handwriting that had always come wrapped like a gift in fancy envelopes at Christmas, sometimes birthdays if it was a lucky year. It was the same handwriting that magically transformed once the seal of the envelope was broken into words that she’d devour quickly, hanging on every word. It had taken her years to realize that those envelopes would never contain anything with either substance or weight inside.

“What the hell?” Anna thought. Her father hadn’t died a rich man, of that she was sure. She was also sure he wasn’t the type of man to keep records. Without a will, it had been a tedious process to discover exactly what was owed and what was owned. The list of creditors had been much, much longer than the list of assets in the end. Any crumbs that may have fallen to the table had been scavenged by the lawyers.

Turning the page, it took Anna only a moment to realize that the book was a journal. The page, “California Dreaming”, was covered with dates and names of cities in different colored inks, eraser scuffs, and penciled sentences that had been crossed out and written over. There were phone numbers and names of what she thought sounded like hotels. Fascinated, she turned the page and discovered the first picture. It was of a much younger version of her father looking at the camera through sun-squinted eyes. He was standing on a beach, shirtless, with his jeans rolled up to his knees, shoes hanging from his fingertips. Whoever had taken the photo had caught him in the middle of a laugh and the joy captured in that moment was contagious. Anna laughed deeply, startled by the hollow echo from the bare walls.

She quickly found herself immersed in the journal, crying and laughing with each turn of the page. It seemed her father had written the most hidden, secret parts of himself into the stories and memories of the places he visited.

“I need more wine for this.” Anna got up and went into the kitchen, topping off her glass while looking out into the woods that bordered the backyard. Night was settling in and the fireflies were just coming out which seemed to bring the whole yard to life. There was only one night she could remember spending in this house as a child. It was a ghost of a memory, faded and transparent, but it was there. A warm summer night, sipping lemonade on the back porch, catching fireflies and listening to crickets. It was one of the few memories she had of her childhood that inspired feelings of contentment and bliss. One of the few moments that existed in the entirety of her life she could ever remember feeling that way. For as long as she could remember, she had always felt unsettled and ungrounded. What she was reading in the journal seemed to bring that part of her into sharp focus. She was reading herself into her father’s words.

The night passed quickly, and before she knew it, the first rays of sunlight began peeking through the curtains on the opposite side of the desk. Anna stretched in her chair and rubbed her still weepy, irritated eyes. She hadn’t meant to stay up all night, but she couldn’t seem to put the book down. She had spent the night reading about all the places her father had dreamed about going but never made it to, the places he explored that were obvious favorites, and the places that only merited a disappointing line or two.

When she came to the end, it was with a strange mix of sadness and joy that she flipped through the last few seemingly blank pages. On the next to the last page, Anna found lines of numbers written randomly all over the page. Most of the numbers were crossed out, but there was one set, close to the bottom that was untouched. The way that the numbers were written led her to believe they were GPS coordinates. “What in the…?” Anna’s words trailed off as she went into the other room to grab her phone.

Feeling like a detective, Anna input the numbers and waited. Once the map loaded, she was shocked. The location shown wasn’t that far from where she was standing. Slipping on her shoes, Anna stepped out on the porch in the morning light and followed the map as it led her across the yard and stopped at the edge of the trees. She furrowed her brow, looking intently at the entire area around her for some sort of clue that could help her figure out what she was looking for exactly.

Anna could feel her frustration growing as she walked the perimeter of the small area shown on her phone. “Maybe he got the numbers wrong.” She grimaced at the thought and lay down on the grass, closing her eyes against the bright morning sun. Thinking it was time to call an end to what was quickly becoming in her mind a pointless search, she rolled over on to her side and that’s when she saw it. A flash of metal. Barely noticeable under the thick bush at the base of one of the oak trees. Crawling over to the spot, Anna stretched her arm into the tangle of branches, reaching and feeling for what she had seen. Her hand brushed against something cool, solid, and she knew she had found it. As she hauled it out from under the bush, she laughed, victorious.

It was an old metal coffee can. It had lost it’s label and was rusty in spots but the lid still fit tightly. Anna sat at the edge of the yard, holding it on her lap, nervous. In her mind she knew it was just a can. There was nothing she had read in the journal that would lead her to believe anything bad was contained inside, but still she hesitated. Finally, summoning her brave, she pulled the top off, laid it to the side, and gasped at what she saw.

Inside the can, rolled and wrapped tightly in a clear plastic bag, were what looked like crumpled $100 bills. Amazed, she turned the can over and shook the money out onto the grass. Straightening and separating the bills into stacks she counted, recounted, and then counted one more time just to be sure. $20,000 in total.

Collecting the can and the bills off the lawn, Anna turned her face to the sun, closed her eyes, smiled and whispered a thank you under her breath. $20,000 would be more than enough to fill in those last few blank pages of her father’s journal, and maybe, just maybe there would be enough left over to start a little black notebook of her own.