All My Affection, D.W.

It was Micah who discovered the trunk first.

The first sun of summer hung high in the air and made the attic sweltering hot, and it was not yet 10 AM. The air-conditioner in their grandfather's house had been spotty at best, and it didn’t even reach the attic. The last thing either Micah or Thomas wanted to do was to stay up in the attic any longer than was necessary.

“We need to get this place in order for the appraiser on Monday. We need to get out any and everything of value and sell it, then pawn this musty old death trap to the first sucker who bites,” their step-father had said. Neither Micah, nor Thomas particularly liked their step-father, or who their mother had become since marrying him, but they did as they were told all the same. “You boys check the attic, I doubt there’s anything worthwhile, but might as well toss out the old Christmas decorations while you're up there.”

“Make sure you step carefully,” their mother had added. “Stick to the beams. If you come through the ceiling, we’ll have to patch it up before we can sell it and I don’t want to have to sink any money into this dump.”

The attic, if that’s what you could call it, was mostly several thick wooden beams holding up the ceiling and surrounded by yellow fluff that their mother had told them was insulation and lots of ductwork. Then there was the excess of cobwebs and rat droppings that littered everything.

A rat scurried past as Thomas shined a flashlight on the small area. Several boxes were balanced precariously between beams. Some overflowing with Christmas decorations, and a few looked to be filled with old comic books. Thomas excitedly made his way toward those, only to be disappointed to find the comic books half-melted, and mildewy from several decades worth of rain leakage. The box that held the Christmas decorations looked like it might burst at any minute, the sides were floppy from the water damage and it was clear they too had been destroyed by the leaky roof.

Behind the decorations were boxes of baby things, all ruined, and clearly not of any great value, there’s probably nothing in this whole house worth saving, Micah thought somewhat bitterly as he squinted around in the dark attic. And then he saw it, at the far end of the attic and tucked away behind several ducts so that it was almost invisible, sat a vintage black train trunk. Micah strained to get a better look at the trunk. Squinting in the dark, he stepped carefully across several beams towards it, pushing a cobweb out of his face as he knelt down to get ahold of it. He could feel his twin brother’s eyes on the back of his head; light flooded over him from behind. With some amount of effort, he pulled the trunk free from its hiding spot, balancing it, somewhat precariously on the beam next to him, and opened it.

It was mostly empty, save for an old army uniform, and a thick stack of letters, presumably from their grandmother to their grandfather during the war. Grabbing the letters, he handed the stack to Thomas, then pushed aside the uniform. There, hidden just below the folds of green cloth, sat a small black notebook, with their grandfather’s initials on it.

“You suppose this was grandpa’s trunk?” Micah asked as he picked up the notebook.

“Must be,” Thomas replied, holding up the stack of letters, held together by a thick rubber band. “These all have his name on them.”

Micah nodded and slipped the notebook into his pocket, he turned to close the trunk, when it slipped off of the beam and onto the soft insulation. “Well at least it didn’t…” Micah began, but his words were immediately interrupted by a creak, then, BANG! “Oops.” The trunk crashed through the ceiling and shattered on the hardwood floor below. Micah and Thomas peaked through the hole in the insulation. It was a miracle the whole ceiling hadn’t collapsed. They could hear their step-father bellowing and swearing from the floor below.

“Let in a breeze though,” Thomas said with a small laugh.

Micah swallowed. “Come on, we’d better get out of here,” he said. Thomas nodded, shoving the stack of letters into the back of his trousers to read later. The two took off down the attic steps, bounding down the staircase towards the front door, they could hear their step-father yelling after them, cursing them as they ran back towards their own house. A sprinkler turned on in the neighbor's yard, and the two boys ran through it happily, grateful for the coolness, before reaching their own front door a few minutes later.

Only inside their own house did they feel safe enough to catch their breath and stop running.

Safely ensconced in their shared bedroom, Micah took the notebook out of his pocket. An envelope, not unlike the others in the stack his brother had grabbed, fell out from inside the notebook and onto the floor. The boys shared a look. Micah bent down and picked up the envelope and flipped it over, it was thick and held closed by a strip of tape.

Like the others, it had been addressed to their grandfather, with the return address to a David White of Queens, New York.

Micah looked at his brother then down at the envelope. Did he dare open it?

“It’s not like he’s gonna care,” Thomas said as if reading his brother’s mind.

This was true enough, Micah reasoned.

Inside was a letter folded neatly on yellowing stationery; behind the letter was a large stack of money. Micah examined the letter first.

“Wilbur, maybe now you’ll realize I’m serious, all my affection, D.W.,” Micah read. He stared quizzically at the letter, then pulled out the money. Twenty thousand dollars, in $100 bills.“Who do you suppose he was?”

“Who cares, we’re rich. We can run away, we can move wherever we want with that!”

“We can’t keep it,” Micah argued, ever the responsible one.

“Of course we can! Mic how often have we talked about getting out of here?”

Too often, sometimes it was all Micah could think about, especially these days.

“What if Mr. White is still alive?”

Thomas groaned, “He’d be like a hundred like grandpa was.”

“Maybe if we call Mr. White and tell him about it he’ll let us keep the money anyway.”

Micah examined the little black book, there, on the first page were the initials D.W. and a phone number. Could it really be? Micah wondered, dialing the number, only one way to find out.

The phone rang several times, “Hello?” a man’s voice said.

“Is this Mr. David White?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Micah Kinkaid, my grandfather was Wilbur Kinkaid, I believe you knew him.”

The old man sighed, “What about him?”

“My family and I were cleaning out his home after he died last week, and we found some letters from you to him, and twenty thousand dollars, we were just wondering…”

“If you could keep the money?” the old man finished.

Micah frowned, “More like… why?”

“Frankly young man, that’s none of your business, keep it. But don’t ever contact me again,” the line went dead. Micah stared at the phone in his hand, then at his brother.

“What did he say?” Thomas asked.

“He said never to contact him again.”

“Sounds like a win-win to me.”

Micah wasn’t so sure. “Can I see those letters?”

Thomas pulled the stack of letters from his back pocket and handed it to his brother. Micah took them and examined the pile. There were dozens of letters, the oldest of which was dated 1944 and the last one was dated 1963. Twenty years' worth of letters. A thousand dollars for each year it seemed.

“Come on, let’s take the money and go,” Thomas said knocking Micah out of his thoughts.

“We’re taking the money alright, but I want an explanation from Mr. White.”

“What?”

“We’re going to Queens!” Micah said.

Five hours later, found Micah and Thomas standing in front of Mr. White’s apartment in Queens.

The trip had gone without a hitch. Luckily, they looked old enough not to arouse suspicion and almost no one asked questions. Even when the train conductor had inquired about their parents, Thomas had been quick to tell him that they were both eighteen. He didn’t bother to check.

Micah knocked on the door, unsure whether or not the old man would answer when at last the door opened and the older man with a great shock of white hair stood before them, he didn’t look at all surprised to see them.

“I should have known anyone in Wilbur’s family wouldn’t take ‘leave me alone’ for an answer.”

“I couldn’t just take the money and run without knowing what that was all about.”

The old man sighed, and walked back to his old brown recliner and sat down. The apartment was stuffed to the gills with knickknacks, pictures, and memories, a lifetime of things. “Well you’re here and you found me.”

“We also have this,” Micah reached into his backpack and pulled out the stack of letters. The old man looked at the letters in Micah’s hand then up at him. “You were lovers weren’t you?” Micah said. Thomas looked shocked at that. “I didn’t read them, it felt too personal. But twenty years is an awfully long time to write someone. Even a close friend.”

“He was a friend though, my best friend. And so much more. I loved him more than I have ever loved another human being in my life. We were young, too young to be fighting in a war and too foolish to know anything,” he laughed, darkly. “He didn’t want to disappoint his parents. I told him I would take care of him, I would make sure that nothing bad ever happened to him. I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt when I heard he married, I kept sending him letters with money in them, and he always responded. He never spent a dime did he?” Micah shook his head. “Stubborn old fool, then one day the letters just stopped. Broke my heart, I thought maybe he’d died.”

Micah took the little black book from his backpack and handed it to the old man, “Maybe this has the answer. I think it was his journal. It had the letter where we found the money.”

The old man smiled as he took the journal. “I don’t suppose you have his old uniform still?”

Micah frowned. “We did, only…” Micah didn’t have the heart to tell him his parents had tossed it along with the rest of the house.

“It’s okay,” the man’s eyes were watery. “Thank you boys for coming.”

For a moment neither the man, nor the boys spoke. “I miss him, every day. For me, he’s been gone for decades and yet it still hurts.”

Micah nodded, he eyed his brother, and a silent thought passed between them. “We really can’t keep your money,” he said.

“Oh no you don’t,” the old man said, sternly. “You boys keep that money, you gave me the greatest gift I could have hoped for with this,” he held up the notebook. “Closure.”

Micah smiled. As the two left the old man’s apartment and made their way back home, they couldn’t help but think of their grandfather and the kindly old man who had been his greatest love.

“So what do we do with the money?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t know,” Micah replied. “Something fabulous, just for grandpa.”