Maryanne

She pulled into the driveway. As she sat there holding the keys, she couldn’t bring herself to get out of the car right away. It was not exactly the house she wanted. Instead the unremarkable little ranch was a sensible, responsible choice. But she couldn’t help but think about the tiny, charming cottage with the arched doorways and cozy breakfast nook. That’s where she really pictured herself. That’s where she saw herself hosting intimate dinner parties with close friends, sipping after dinner drinks in front of the fireplace. She wondered how she was supposed to have the impossibly beautiful post-divorce life she imagined in this basic, two bedroom ranch.

As she unlocked the door and walked in, she picked up the mail that piled up at the door. Catalogs and junk mail all addressed to Maryanne Harvey. Through the process of buying the house from Maryanne’s sons, she learned a little bit about her. Maryanne was an artist. She loved to garden and cook. She lived here alone until her recent death.

Besides the mail, there was still evidence of Maryanne’s life everywhere. Scratches on doors, trim, and window sills told her that dogs had lived here. This house had clearly been lived in and loved. She could see where Maryanne had put a fresh coat of paint on the walls but painted around her picture frames rather than take them down and paint behind them. This made her smile. She would never reveal Maryanne’s secret. The darkroom in the basement still had all the equipment and photo paper scattered on the counter ready for her to come back and develop more images. Her sons had left these things and others behind either because they made sense in the house, or these things had no value to them.

She walked around and made plans for the spaces, like new paint and new bedroom carpet. These decisions were made differently now that she was no longer married. This was her place where she could pick and choose the colors as she pleased. She didn’t have to argue or convince anyone of the validity of her choices. She didn’t have to compromise. There was no one there that she had to fight. This was supposed to feel good. This was supposed to make her happy.

In the days that followed, she gradually moved in. She tried to replace the furniture she lost in the divorce agreement. She tried to revel in the fact that she had made this big purchase on her own. Instead, she really just felt like she was stepping into someone else’s life. She noticed subtle signs of Maryanne’s daily presence and her way of moving through the house. There were spots on the doors where the paint had worn away from years of touching them over and over again. The well worn path through the backyard garden. She often thought about Maryanne. She wondered if she had been happy in this simple ranch home. She imagined that she would have liked Maryanne, the artist, the dog lover. But she also wondered if Maryanne had been lonely. Thoughts like these washed her in dread and overwhelming sadness.

As she slowly unpacked and settled in, she looked at the old, red shoe organizer on the closet shelf in the master bedroom, another discarded item left behind by Maryanne’s sons. It was good quality in the way older things are meant to last, so she thought about leaving it there and using it herself. But it didn’t feel like hers. Eventually all of her other things found places in the closet surrounding the organizer while it sat unused. When she couldn’t bring herself to use it, she decided to take it down to the basement and add it to the other items in her purge pile.

It wasn’t heavy at all, yet it was a little large and unwieldy. She was grateful when it separated into two halves down the middle. As she pulled the left side down, little bundles came down with it, falling all around her. They had been tucked discreetly behind the organizer. The bills were crisp and the President’s portrait sat small in ovals in the center of each bill .The money looked strange and unfamiliar. Newer currency had been redesigned with larger, offset faces, and watermarks. It was clear this money had been saved meticulously over many years. Removing the second half of the organizer revealed more bundles of cash and a hardcover black notebook. After gathering up the bundles, she picked up the notebook, slipped off the elastic closure, and flipped through it. Neatly tucked between the pages and in an expandable back pocket were more bills. She was surprised to find that there was $20,000 in all. There was no writing in the notebook.

There she sat with $20,000 that clearly no one knew was there. She thought about all the things she could do with that money: the long list of repairs and updates she wanted to do to the house while the money in her savings was running short. This was a lot of money, and she could do a lot with it. But this money wasn’t hers. It belonged to Maryanne.

It took her a week of debating with herself. This didn’t feel like “found” money because she knew exactly who it belonged to, yet she could keep it and no one would know. Then again she could be the type of person who didn’t keep secrets anymore. It was secrets that ended her marriage but while his secrets were revealed, hers remained. She never had the courage to admit them. Finally she picked up the phone and called one of Maryanne’s sons and asked them to meet her. She had something for them.

While she would have been happy to do this over coffee, they generously invited her to lunch at the private dining club where they were members. The club was something she could never afford to join herself. It was housed in a Queen Anne style historic home with all the elegance one would expect, complete with Victorian decor. Maryanne’s sons were warm and welcoming. She could tell they had no idea what she was about to reveal to them. Her hands trembled as she explained what she had found and handed over the bag that she carried in. They opened it with looks of astonishment and gratitude. She wasn’t sure how she would feel but found that she felt gratified. She was happy she returned what had not belonged to her, however, she could not bring herself to hand over the notebook. Afterall, it was nothing of value, and it would have seemed inconsequential to them.

When she got home, she sat in the front window and gazed out at the weeping cherry tree in full bloom, opened the notebook, wrote her name on the flyleaf, and thought of Maryanne. Then, she began writing her new story.