Little Black Book

I couldn’t believe it. She was gone. “Mysterious circumstances” they called it. They being the police. Gran had disappeared a week ago, no body recovered. She was just assumed dead and everyone moved on with their lives, even my aunt and cousins. It wasn’t fair! Why was I the only one who refused to accept it?

The therapist said that it was because I was so close to her, Gran having raised me when my mother walked out. That was seventeen years ago, just a few months after I was born. I’ve lived with Gran ever since and we’ve had each other’s backs through thick and thin.

But now I’m alone.

They called her a hermit. She was just old and couldn’t get out much anymore. When I said that disappearing for a week wasn’t like her, they never believed me. Everyone wanted the town’s crazy old woman to be gone. They all but said ‘good riddance’ an hour ago – at her funeral.

Why does no one believe me? If she was dead, someone killed her! She’d never do it herself! She didn’t venture out for no reason! She wasn’t crazy!

Now I’m being called crazy. And the therapist says I need to let it go. I refuse. Something happened to her and I want to know what it was. Gran was missing so I had no help in defending my reasoning or investigating myself, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. She deserved this, at least. And I wanted closure.

How could officers of the law get away with this? This was refusing to investigate a missing woman. How was it legal to essentially say ‘we can’t find so she must be dead, oh well?” What a cruel place this world has come to, to judge a woman for not coming out of her house every day. What a shame.

Come to think of it, this whole situation reminded me of a song, but I couldn’t remember what one.

“Corrine, the person to read the will is here,” a voice yelled up the stairwell. I think it was my Aunt Karra. “We’ve already heard the will, but he is supposed to read it to you separately.”

I stomped down the stairs, nearly bumping into Aunt Karra at the bottom. “I hope you’ll be okay staying here by yourself tonight. You’ll be living with me by the end of the week.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I muttered. Three months. I can get out in three months.

“We’re all going home. We’ll be back tonight, but for now it’ll just be you here after the will-reader leaves.”

I nodded then entered Gran’s study. A man in a suit was sitting in Gran’s office chair at her desk. His dark hair was slicked back, and he was wearing thin, rectangular glassed.

“Bye!” Aunt Karra yelled from the parlor. I didn’t respond, but the man’s dark eyes slid up to look at me. Suddenly my stomach dropped and I got a chill. He wasn’t old, maybe 25, but his eyes were… off. They seemed… for lack of a better way to describe it, ancient.

I heard the front door shut, signaling the only other people in the house leaving. It was just me and the strange man before me.

“Hello, Corrine,” he said, his voice mostly smooth and deep, but with a slight, slight rasp to it. Again, my stomach dropped and I got this feeling of dread. I did not like this man, though I had no idea as to why. “I am sorry for your loss. I am to understand your grandmother and you were close.”

I nodded, glancing at the desk. An open binder sat in the middle right in front of the man, open to what I would assume to be the page of Gran’s will. A small stack of books sat to my left of the binder, the top one being a small black sketchbook or notebook, I couldn’t tell which. This man was very clean, very organized and paid attention to detail, I could tell. He looked extremely professional, and everything on the once clear desk was in a specific place, dictated by him. He seemed to have made himself at home. The thought made me bitter.

“I regret to be the one to do this, but as you may know, I am here to read Merryweather’s will.”

“May.”

“I beg your pardon,” he frowned, his brows coming together.

“She preferred ‘May’.”

“Apologies. I am here to read May’s will.” He seemed to sneer at the name. Something about this man was wrong, but I didn’t know what.

“Now, it says here that you are to be given most of her savings – twenty-thousand dollars. And once you are eighteen, the house will be put in your name. An option, though, is that you can have your aunt sell the house and the money is put in with the twenty thousand you already have. I highly suggest this option.”

“No. I’m keeping the house until I find her.”

“I’m sorry? Find her? Corrine, your grandmother is dead.”

“They never found a body. I refuse to accept that she is dead.”

“Corrine, it’s been a week. She is dead, body or no. A woman of seventy-six cannot survive for a week on her own.”

“You never knew her! You’re just the useless jerk here to read the will of a woman who isn’t dead!” I couldn’t help my rage. Everyone around me said she was dead and called me foolish to believe otherwise. I could only take so much more before I blew up. I was the only one who wasn’t happy she was gone.

“Young lady, I do not appreciate that tone.”

“And I don’t appreciate being told the will of a living woman. Your point?”

“Little girl, do you want proof that your grandmother is well and truly gone?”

I stopped dead in my tracks, eyes wide and color draining from my face, “What?”

“I can tell she raised you,” the man said as he stood, knocking the small black book off its place. It flipped open to reveal a well drawn picture of Gran.

“What the f-“

“You both annoyed me to no end,” the man grimaced and curled he lip. He then checked himself, brushing the front of his jacket with his hands, and breathing out. He snatched the book up and I stumbled backwards, falling on my rear. I frantically began scooting backwards as he walked closer to me on oddly long legs. Now that I think of if he was awfully long-limbed and slightly gangly. He was just off in general.

“Join your grandmother,” he hissed, shoving the open book in my face. I have no idea how, but I could see myself start to fade. My left arm and leg disappeared and appeared in the little black book, on the page next to Gran.

I now understand the mysterious circumstances of her disappearance.

The long-limbed man stood in front of a grave. It read ‘Here lies Merryweather Grite, beloved by her family and a mother to her granddaughter.’ He grinned. The gravestone next to it read ‘Here lies Corrine Grite, who never gave up in spite of the odds. May she now be reunited with her grandmother.” He put the little black book in his pocket.

Oh, yes, they were reunited.