Thank You.

It was late spring when it happened again. Another Tuesday, Erica off on her errands. It wasn't round the same corner this time, but a block further along, laying at the edge of a lawn, just off the sidewalk. A little black book. Erica looked around quickly. All seemed normal. A few teens, likely skipping school, coming out of a newsstand up ahead with bags of chips and energy drinks. An older man walking his dog on the opposite side of the street. Construction workers replacing a roof a few doors down. Normal, normal, normal. Erica picked up the book, frowning, and opened to the first page.

'If found, please return to 1428 Rose Crescent. Reward: $900.'

This time she flipped through the pages of the book. All blank. Shit, she whispered.

The sun was bright, despite the cold and snow, and Erica was basking in it, taking her time. Tuesdays were her one day off a week, her errand day, and usually not much in the way of restful. But today, what with the sun, she opted to walk a little slower en route to the grocery store. She turned her face up into the light, feeling the crisp air freezing the insides of her nose, then stopped to take a picture of a shrub that had snow piled on it in an especially charming way. She was rounding a corner when she spotted something out of place. A little black notebook a few feet up the walk, splashed with grit from sanding trucks. Erica picked up the book, brushed the grit off with her coat sleeve, and opened it to the first page.

'If found, please return to 1428 Rose Crescent. Reward: $500.'

Well, Erica thought. That'd certainly be worth the detour.

She worked four days a week at a little diner as their daytime girl. With only her and the line cook, the days were long and pleasant, but far from money-makers. Most of her customers were in for a long sit with just a bottomless coffee, artist types working on plays or books, old ladies passing the day chatting, and maybe the odd day-drinker nursing a pint while reading the paper. There was a small lunch rush most days, but nothing compared to some of the restaurants she'd worked at before. But she liked the people, the pace, the general lack of pretension. She was happy at her little diner. Still, she struggled to make ends meet with the small paycheck and tips. She'd recently taken up a cleaning job two nights a week at an office building. The work wasn't so bad. Solitary, which was nice. She'd listen to audiobooks while emptying trash cans, vacuuming around office chairs, dusting keyboards and file cabinets. Lately she'd been enjoying listening to murder mystery novels, until she got herself too freaked out in the big empty spaces all by herself, and would then have to switch to something more soothingly bland like a history of libraries in the US, for example. All of which was to say living in the city alone was expensive, and, even with the two jobs Erica could never quite find enough money to come out anything more than even. And that’s ignoring the balances on her two credit cards... So $500 for a longer than normal walk on a gorgeous day? A no-brainer.

1428 Rose Crescent was a small house. Wartime, Erica guessed, though she wasn't certain she understood, actually, what wartime meant for houses. She thought of them as the ones with character. Quaint. 1428 was two stories tall, and had three steps leading up to a dark green door with a small, pretty, round stained glass window in its center. Iron railings flanked the stairs and circled the small porch, where two large flower pots held wintergold shrubs. She walked up the steps and looked for a doorbell. No luck, so she knocked loudly. No answer. No movement behind the little window. She waited a few minutes, bouncing slightly from foot to foot. She felt odd standing there. Now that she was up close, she felt off, and eager to leave. She knocked again. Waited. Nothing. Erica sighed. She crouched down to the mail slot in the door, and slid the little book in through the flap. Immediately an envelope slipped out the same slot, and into Erica's hands. She shivered. There was still no sign of movement behind the door. The envelope read 'Thank You.' in the kind of formal cursive her grandparents had used when writing letters and cards. Inside the envelope were five crisp, pristine $100 bills. Erica stuttered out a'Thank YOU!' and rushed back down the steps, away from the house.

After buying her groceries and a decent bottle of wine, Erica deposited the rest of her reward money at the ATM on her way home. Then promptly pulled out her phone and put that money towards one of her credit card balances. She grinned. A strange excursion, a great story to tell the friends who were coming over for a drink tonight, and a little lightening of her financial stresses. A decent day off.

But today, on what should have been a normal spring day, as she held the mostly blank notebook in her shaking hands, she felt queasy. But $900. She could take a few days off. She could get a new pair of work shoes, her current ones becoming dangerously thin in the soles. So she took the book and walked, again, to the door of 1428. Like the last time, no one answered her knock. No sign of life inside. She didn't wait. She slid the book through the mail slot, and was rewarded with an envelope. 'Thank You.' in that same cursive. $900 in brand new bills.

The fifth time she found it the book was soaked and swollen, caught in the back and forth of a lawn sprinkler. The eighth time it was in the crook of a bare tree branch reaching out over the sidewalk.

And so it went on. Again and again, a little black notebook, a new reward. $1300, $1500, $1600, then $2000. Always somewhere new. Never a pattern to when it would show up. First it was after five months, then three, then a whole ten months later, then six. Every time her eyes fell on its shape in her path, Erica's stomach would flip and churn. Her head buzzed. She felt a whir of panic. Then she'd pick it up, walk to 1428, and leave with an envelope. 'Thank You.'

Erica walked and walked, now, her head always bent toward the ground. She would circle those blocks around her neighborhood again and again, taking the streets in a different order every time. She'd lost the diner job, coming in late too many times, looking disheveled, seeming distracted. She was still cleaning two nights a week, but she was preoccupied, haphazard in her work. It seemed likely they'd let her go, soon, too. She was thinner than she'd ever been, with deep circles under her eyes and a hunch to her neck and shoulders. Somewhere along the way she'd stopped calling her friends to come over, to go to theirs. At first they'd thought her stories about the notebook were funny and odd, but that quickly turned to concern, and then to just plain old disbelief. Erica had let herself drift away, focused on her perpetual mission. She walked and walked, always looking. Forever waiting to see a little black book on the ground.