The Others

Millicent Grace MacGregor was dead. Gracie’s favorite person was gone, and she’d left her with a strange message:

“Find the others. Find the others, Gracie.” She’d gasped a final breath and closed her eyes.

In her grief, Gracie headed straight to her grandmother’s home. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she clearly had a mission to accomplish. She went straight to the bedroom, picked up the small book, and read Millie’s last journal entry.

She’d watched her grandmother write in these tiny red journals her entire life. They chronicled her life – the joy and pain of love and loss.

Millie had been the only constant in Gracie’s life when her own mother couldn’t be counted on to take care of her, and when Gracie’s marriage started to fall apart and the bills started piling up, Grandma Millie had come to her rescue. She’d shared what little she had in her savings, tut-tutting when Gracie protested.

“It’s my money, what am I going to do with it when I’m dead? Might as well see you enjoy it now,” she’d said.

Gracie almost smiled, thinking about all the times Millie had been there for her. A shoulder to cry on, a cherry popsicle to brighten her day, and a firm push back out into the world any time she’d experienced a pitfall in her life. She had a craving for a cherry popsicle right now.

Millie always insisted on creaking down the old stairs to the basement for the popsicles, even when Grampy died seven years ago and her knees started aching.

“It’s one of the things I enjoy most,” Millie said every time.

Now Gracie would have to get her own popsicles. She lifted the lid of the large freezer and choked back a scream. The box of cherry popsicles was there, sitting on the chest of her frozen Grampy.

Scrambling backward, the lid dropped, shutting out the terrifying sight of her grandfather’s staring eyes. If Grampy was here in the freezer, what was in the urn on the mantle?

The horror of realizing her grandfather had been here in the freezer all these years was covered by a new memory: Her grandmother’s face, wreathed in a giant smile every time she’d looked down into the chest to grab a popsicle. Gracie always thought it was because she was so happy to spend time with her granddaughter, but now she wasn’t sure!

Gracie rushed upstairs and stopped in front of the mantle. The other thing her grandmother always insisted on? No one touched the urn. Those were her two rules.

1. Only Grandma Millie could get popsicles.

2. No one touched Grampy’s urn.

She carefully lifted the urn and felt a “thunk” inside as she tilted it. There were no ashes in this urn. Gracie set it on the table and removed the lid. With a gasp, she peered inside to see two black journals, the same shape, and size as her grandmother’s red journals.

In her grandmother’s looping script, the first page read:

Gracie, if you’re reading this, I’m dead. You’re the only one who deserves what’s in these journals. If anyone else is reading this – fuck off! My will clearly states these journals belong to Gracie, as does anything revealed in them. I love you sweetheart – don’t let Jack come back home – he’s a Jack-ass for cheating on you! Go live the life you want to live! These journals will help you do that!

-Grandma Millie

Gracie’s hand covered her mouth, shock ricocheting through her. She’d never heard her grandmother utter a single curse word in her entire life. Clearly, Gracie didn’t really know Millie, because as she flipped through the journal, she read dates and numbers.

December 13, 2020 - $1000 deposited

November 13, 2020 - $1000 deposited

October 13, 2020 - $1000 deposited

She read farther, flipping page after page, and saw deposits going back seven and a half years. Right down to the month Grampy died. No wonder Millie had him “cremated” so fast no one else knew about it, and she insisted on no funeral, no arrangements. She said she was too brokenhearted losing her love to have a celebration for him, but she’d kept him in the freezer and kept his monthly Social Security checks for the past seven and a half years!

It was all there, in black ink pen notations on thin white pages. An envelope was taped to the back cover of the tiny black book.

Gracie couldn’t open the envelope. She didn’t know when she’d started crying, but tears were plopping on the table by the urn. Everything she knew about her favorite person in the world was caving in around her. Her grandmother was not only a thief but maybe even a murderer.

Then she remembered the other black notebook in the urn. She flipped it open and gasped again before grabbing the red book from the bedroom.

Every entry in the red book was matched by an entry in the black book. The black book appeared to contain her grandmother’s true thoughts, feelings, and yes, even experiences. Accidents were revealed as vengeful acts. Things she probably never said to the neighbor she hated were clearly written out on the page. They matched sweet anecdotes about the neighbor and faked sadness over the “accidents” that happened. Horror crawled up her back as she read on. At the back of the book, she saw the words: 2020 - Book 89.

Gracie dashed to the bathroom and just made it to the toilet where she emptied her stomach of its contents – hospital coffee was even worse coming back up. Quick math had her head pounding. There were notebooks somewhere dating back to when her grandmother was just nine years old. She’d been like this nearly her entire life, and Gracie had been completely in the dark.

The paper inside the envelope held a scrawled note from her grandmother and information naming Gracie as the other account holder on a single account at the bank.

Take the money and go with my blessing. Do what I could never do, Gracie. Be free and happy.

-Grandma Millie

Gracie plunged down the stairs to the basement, shuddering as she passed the freezer. There were two small boxes stacked in the corner, and she could see years written on them. Each box held 80 journals inside them. She opened the first box and found 40 red journals on top, 40 black journals on the bottom. The other box was the same.

She leaned against the wall, choppy breaths wheezing in and out of her chest. She had a sick urge to read all the black journals, but she also had a banknote with an account number burning a hole in her pocket.

Gracie jogged upstairs, grabbed the two black journals and the single red journal, and tucked them into her purse. Then she locked the house and climbed into her car. Was she really going to the bank when Grampy was in the freezer? He’d been there for seven years. Since she was the only one with a key to the house, he could wait for her to make a quick trip to the bank.

She pounded her head on the headrest. What was she doing? She was a law-abiding citizen. She always paid her taxes on time, stayed faithful to her husband, and drove the speed limit at all times. She should call the police and report this. Before she was in trouble.

She pressed the power button in her Prius, flipped a U-turn, and pointed her car toward the bank. Just this one time, she’d see what was there first. Before she had to turn over however much money there was to the police.

At the bank, she showed the letter to the woman stationed near the door and was ushered into a private room. Moments later, a distinguished older man entered the room and shook her hand.

“Mrs. Brower?” He sat behind the desk.

“Well, it’s soon-to-be Ms. MacGregor again, but I mean, uh, that’s not why I’m here and you don’t care about that,” Gracie said, flushing.

“I have you down on the account as both names, actually,” he said, sliding on a pair of glasses to stare at the computer screen in front of him.

“Oh. Okay.”

“I’m assuming you’ll want to withdraw this in cash, or would you prefer a cashier’s check?”

“Cash?” Gracie’s eyebrows squeezed together, but her confusion went over his head.

“Okay then, not a problem,” he said. “Mrs. MacGregor asked us to put aside the cash just last week, stating that you’d be closing the account?”

“She did?” Gracie tried to keep up.

“Yes ma’am. She said you’d be in soon to collect it. She did quite well in her investments, so you’ll need quite a bit of space, but she made arrangements for that as well,” he said. He pushed the glasses back up his nose with a single finger before sliding a document across the desk.

“I’ll just need your signature and a picture of your license and we can get it put together in about ten minutes,” he said.

Gracie’s head was spinning as she read the number on the sheet of paper. Two million, three hundred and ninety-eight thousand dollars and twenty-seven cents. For some reason, the 27 cents had her giggling.

“Ma’am? Do you want to sign?” He tapped the X he’d marked.

“Uh, of course,” Gracie said. The words just popped out. This was stolen money! It belonged to the government and she could get in so much trouble for having it, signing this document, not calling the authorities.

She looped her signature on the line, then watched as he signed as a witness. John Knowlton. She hadn’t even known his name until that moment, but he was about to give her nearly two and a half million dollars.

“Okay, I’ll be back in a jiffy,” Mr. Knowlton said.

She should put a stop to this now. She really should. But before she could make a complete list of all the laws she’d broken, Mr. Knowlton was returning with several open duffel bags. At her goggling, he zipped them, handed them to her, and bid her a good day. Then she walked out of the bank a multi-millionaire.

Gracie stood in front of her car for a few moments, knowing she should return the money, call the police, confess everything she knew. Then her pounding heart kicked up a notch. Her passport had come in the mail yesterday and was still stuffed in her purse. A never-going-to-happen trip Jack had promised would put everything right between them had foolishly prompted Gracie to renew it.

“Get your passport, sweet girl, you might need it,” Millie had said.

“It’s never going to happen – you know Jack won’t keep his word, I mean, Cozumel? Really?” Gracie wavered, but Millie pressed her.

“You never know,” Millie said, a smile blooming across her face. “I won’t be here with cherry popsicles forever. Maybe you’ll want to take a trip someday.”

“It seems silly,” Gracie said.

“Do it. That’s an order, and you wouldn’t want to disappoint Grandma Millie now, would you?” With the memory of Millie’s smile, Gracie tapped a few buttons on her phone.

Minutes later, a dark sedan pulled up. She opened the back door as the driver turned to face her. “Gracie Brower?” At her nod, he faced the front again.

She dragged the duffel bags into the car with her.

“Headed to the airport?”

He met her eyes in the rearview mirror and she smiled for the first time since holding Millie’s hand just hours ago.

“Yes, I am.”