Once More

Knock knock knock

Piper stepped back from the door, checking the house number for a third time, making sure she was at the right place.

A moment later, she knocked again. Three more raps. She told herself two more minutes. Wait two more minutes tops, then leave. Try again another time.

Though, she really didn’t want to walk away from this find.

Not a minute later, Piper heard the locks on the other side of the door start clicking. Metal scuffing against metal before the knob turned. The door released a sharp whine as it was opened.

Piper smiled at the small, shriveled woman before her. A puff of silver hair and a long cotton gown that touched the floor, but revealed a pair of slate blue slippers poking out from under the hem.

“Erma Cramer?”

The old woman nodded. Her eyes were wide and her skin looked like velvet crepe paper.

“Hello Ms. Cramer. I’m Piper Franz. I’m the buyer. I’m here to pick up the desk.”

Ms. Cramer smiled, revealing manufactured ivory teeth too perfect to be real. With a wave of her hand, Ms. Cramer summoned Piper into the house.

“Oh, um,” Piper said, hesitating. Her brother’s voice echoed in her head.

“I don’t like you going to those places, Piper,” he’d said. “You don’t know who these people are. If you’re going alone, just don’t go in anyone’s house. Don’t get in their car. Be smart, okay?”

Piper glanced into the house, assessing the situation. The house was dimly lit, but a yellowish glow illuminated one side of the front room. The walls were lined with aged furnishings and the clutter of old age. The priceless, meaningful possessions that just couldn’t be parted with. And before you know it, your shelves are brimming with trinkets and figurines and baubles galore.

Ms. Cramer was already across the front room when she turned back to Piper, gesturing again, but now pointing down a hallway.

With a deep breath, Piper stepped into the home. She walked slowly towards Ms. Cramer who was now scribbling in a small black, leather-bound notebook. When finished, the old woman turned the notebook for Piper to see what she’d written.

“Desk in guest room down hall,” the words said.

Piper nodded. “Okay.”

She followed carefully behind Ms. Cramer’s methodical shuffle-steps down the hallway to the last door on the left. There, Piper saw the very desk she was there for. Smiling she stepped up to it, running her finger tips over the top.

Just a week ago she’d come across the desk on a buy-sell-trade page. She could hardly believe what she was looking at. The scrolled accents on the legs, the ornate dangle pulls, the glassy gloss finish of the desktop. It was the exact same.

“My grandma had one just like this,” she said, turning to Ms. Cramer. “I used to sit at it with her when I was younger. We’d do her crosswords together. It’s how I learned how to read and spell.”

Piper could distinctly remember watching her grandmother write letters as a young girl. Her grandmother had the kind of handwriting that would make a trained calligrapher gasp. Or scavenging the drawers for the most beautiful postage stamps. Grandma only ever needed one, but Piper couldn’t choose.

“Was my mother’s,” Ms. Cramer wrote in another page of her notebook.

Piper smirked. “I’m sorry you have to part with it.”

“No use for it now.”

“Well, I can tell you it will get a lot of use at my apartment,” Piper said.

“Happy to hear.”

“Okay, let’s see if I can get this guy out of here.” After a few failed attempts at finding a good grip, Piper hoisted the desk off the floor and out the bedroom. She could hear Ms. Cramer sliding her feet down the hall after her.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Piper set the desk down on the porch and reached into her jacket pocket. “Thank you so much for this,” she said, handing Ms. Cramer $100. “You have no idea what it means to me.”

Piper waited as Ms. Cramer jotted in the notebook one more time. “Once loved. Once forgotten. Loved once more.”

“Yes, yes very true,” Piper said. “Um, do you mind if I keep that page? Can I have that?” She pointed at the notebook.

Ms. Cramer’s shaky hands worked carefully to tear the page from the notebook as neatly as possible before handing it to Piper. Opening the top drawer of the desk, Piper set the paper inside.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Cramer,” Piper said before hoisting the desk up. “And thanks again.”

As Piper pulled away from the house, she waved at Ms. Cramer. The old woman was still standing in the open doorway, notebook tucked against her chest.

After an exhausting battle getting the desk into her three-story walk up, Piper marveled at how lovely the piece was, positioned ever so perfectly under the window. Exactly how her grandmother’s used to be.

That desk was the first and only piece of furniture in that small bedroom of hers.

“You need a bed,” her brother insisted. “And I can get you a newer desk for half as much. You’ve got to make your dollar stretch. Come on now. Prioritize, Piper.”

Seeing the desk now, knowing it belonged to her, Piper had no regrets. She’d sleep on her third generation hand-me-down couch for the next year if it meant she could have this desk.

Opening the top drawer, she pulled out the notebook page Ms. Cramer had given her. If only the sweet woman had known just how fiercely the words had struck Piper. She peeled an old picture of her and her ex out of a picture frame and replaced it with the notebook page.

With the frame now proudly displayed on the top of the desk, Piper started testing out the drawers to see which of them needed a layer of bar soap on the bottom. When she got to the bottom drawer, Piper was surprised to find an envelope inside. She reached in and picked it up. It was thicker and heavier than she first perceived.

“Oh my god,” Piper said out loud as she pulled back the flap to reveal bills. Twenty dollar bills. Her hands started to quake as she thumbed the money, frantically trying to do the math in her head. There had to be thousands of dollars assuming each bill was the same denomination.

She pulled the bills out of the envelope. It took her a few tries to count. Her hands still shaking, the bills getting stuck together, and counting three times through, just to make sure she got the same number each time.

“$20,000,” she mumbled to herself on a breath of disbelief.

How could Ms. Cramer have overlooked this? Why hadn’t Piper checked the drawers while she was still there? What did she do now?

She faced the kind of moral dilemma high school students would spend an entire class period debating. Was the money hers now? She paid for the desk, and therefore, at least legally speaking, she was entitled to the money.

But even holding the money made her feel like she was doing something wrong. Piper had the urge to look over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching her. She set the bills on the desktop. They fanned out tauntingly.

Piper grabbed the envelope and examined it, looking for any notes or scribbles. Anything to explain the purpose of the stowed away sum. But the envelope was blank. Hadn’t even been sealed.

Dropping the envelope next to the money, Piper sighed. The truth was, there really was no one right and one wrong answer. To keep the money or to give it back. It truly was up to her. The desperate side of her was tipping closer to pocketing the cash the more time she spent thinking about it. What’s more, standing in her desolate bedroom was the strongest argument to be made.

But $20,000? How? How could she keep all that and still face herself? For all she knew, Ms. Cramer needed this as much as she did. And there was a chance, given her age, that the money was stored in the desk and completely forgotten. That doesn’t mean it was of no use to the woman.

With the tips of her fingers, Piper slid a number of bills out of the stack. Just a few, she thought, portioning a share for her and leaving the rest for Ms. Cramer. She probably wouldn’t even know, Piper thought as her eyes moved from one stack to another.

“She’ll just be thankful she got any money back at all,” Piper spoke out loud to herself in an effort to ease her conscious. A conscious that was still highly against keeping any of the money at all. “She might offer me a reward for returning it, which I can decline because I’ve already parceled myself a reward. Finders fee.”

The words felt scummy, the opposite of their intended affect.

“Just do it,” she snapped at herself, scooping up both piles of bills, stacking them together, and marching to the door.

Piper hopped into her car and made her way back across town to Erma Cramer’s house.

Once there and parked in the driveway, Piper sat in the front seat of her car, the money laying in her lap.

“Why is this such a hard decision?” She asked herself. It shouldn’t have been. She was a good person. There was no reason for torturing over it like this. She knew what the right thing to do was. There was no debate, no questioning, no compromising.

In her heart, there was only one answer.

Knock knock knock

Like the first time, Piper waited an exaggerated amount of time before the scraping of the locks and the fight of the tight-fitting door happened.

“Hello again, Ms. Cramer,” Piper said. “I, um, I found this envelope in the desk I just bought from you.”

Piper held the envelope out in front of her, between herself and the old woman. She watched Ms. Cramer’s eyes probe the parcel for a stretch. Then, Ms. Cramer started writing again.

“Not mine,” the words in the notebook said.

“Yes, it is,” Piper said with a nod. “It was in the bottom drawer of the desk. The one I just picked up from here. Do you remember? Do you remember me?”

Ms. Cramer nodded.

“Okay. Um, well this has to be yours. It was in the drawer and I hadn’t, it’s not mine.”

Again, Ms. Cramer wrote in the black notebook.

“Must be yours.”

Piper felt a flush of frustration. Was the woman not understanding? “Ms. Cramer, this isn’t mine,” she said before pulling back the flap of the envelope to reveal the money. “Please, I just want to return it to you.”

Ms. Cramer’s aged, watery eyes noted the cash before turning her attention to her notebook.

“Cannot return what doesn’t belong.”

“Yes,” Piper said. She could hear her voice getting shrill before swallowing it back. “Please, take it back.”

“Maybe was meant for you.”

Piper’s brow furrowed. “Meant for me? Did you know it was in there? Did you leave it on purpose?”

Ms. Cramer shrugged her shoulders, looking away in slow, dramatic fashion.

“I can’t, I cannot accept, I can’t take this,” Piper stammered. Her arm was still outstretched.

“Nor can I. No use for it now.”

Piper’s eyes started to fill with tears. “There has to be more use for it than to give it away to a complete stranger.”

“Not strangers. I know you. I was you. We are the same.”

After reading the note, Piper stared at the old woman in disbelief. They held each other’s gazes before Ms. Cramer returned to the notebook one last time.

“Once loved. Once forgotten. Loved once more.”