Wax Seals

Elenor held the vibrating phone in her hand, trying to decide if she felt like answering it or not. Finally, just before the call could be sent to voicemail, she swiped to accept the call and put it to her ear.

“Hello, Elenor speaking.”

“Oh, um… I’m calling for a Li Parker?” The female voice on the other end of the phone sounded uncertain.

“Ah, yes, that’s me. My middle name is Li and I often go by that name,” she said quickly into the phone.

“Ah, I see. Um…” The young woman paused.

“How can I help you?” Elenor asked when the other woman didn’t immediately begin speaking again.

“Um, well, did you live with my grandmother, Dorothy Bigsby, up until about November of last year?”

“Wha-” she paused, surprised to hear that name again. Finally, she answered, “Yeah, I did. Is everything alright?”

“Well, actually, no. Are you available to meet sometime this week?”

Her heart clenched, knowing without asking that Mrs. Dorothy had probably passed away recently. Elenor had left some things at the old woman’s house when she left suddenly at the end of last year. She had intended to return to the big house and the sweet old lady who owned it. Things had just gotten a little out of control, what with her mother being diagnosed with cancer and her sister mysteriously reappearing after two years away with a baby in tow.

“Um, actually, I’m currently in Georgia, not New York…” she trailed off in her explanation.

“Oh, uh, yeah, that does make it a little difficult to meet up. Um… let me talk to someone and I’ll call you back. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Elenor said automatically, not really registering what she was agreeing to until after they had said their goodbyes and ended the call.

~~~~~

It was a few days later when she got another call from Mrs. Dorothy’s granddaughter.

“Hi, this is Elizabeth Bigsby. I’m Dorothy’s granddaughter. I realized I forgot to introduce myself last time I called you. How are you doing today?”

“Hi, yes. Um… I’m doing okay, I guess. Could be better, but also not much to complain about?” Elenor stumbled through the explanation, knowing the other woman probably didn’t really care anyway.

“Ah, yeah, I understand that. Um.” Elizabeth paused, sounding uncertain again. “We, my father and I, want to fly you up here to New York. Grandma Dot talked about you quite a lot during her final weeks and we’d really like to meet you.”

“Oh, um… When?” she asked, surprised.

“As soon as it’s convenient for you. You tell us when you want to leave and from where and we’ll buy you a ticket and send you the confirmation information. We’ll even make it a round trip ticket if you’d like.” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, that’s very generous of you. But that’s a lot to go through just so you can meet me.” Elenor was a little confused.

“Well, there’s a little more to it, to be honest.” Elizabeth paused again and Elenor heard an unintelligible male voice in the background.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, to be honest, Grandma Dot left you something in her will…”

“What? Why would she do that? I’m not even related to her.” Elenor was shocked, and slightly flattered as well.

Elenor had lived with Mrs. Dorothy for almost four years before she had to leave suddenly. She’d answered an ad in the Classifieds looking for a young, working woman who wouldn’t mind helping an old woman take care of an equally old house in upstate New York.

When Elenor had arrived at the house for the interview, an at-home care nurse had answered the door and showed her into the parlor where Mrs. Dorothy was waiting for her. The old woman took an immediate liking to the awkward, tattooed twenty-four year old writer and asked when she could move in.

Elenor and Mrs. Dorothy had gotten along like a house on fire. Elenor enjoyed listening to Mrs. Dorothy’s tales of being in the Air Force during the Korean War. And, in return, she helped Elenor work through some of the gaping plot-holes in the novel she had been working on. It had been really hard to leave the feisty old woman to return back to her own family. Especially because Elenor knew Mrs. Dorothy’s health was slowly starting to fail. She had regretted having to leave, and had always intended to return.

“I don’t know. She didn’t explain in her will, just said everything would be explained later.” Elizabeth said, sounding like she was frowning. “Did she happen to give you something when you moved out? A book or a package or something?

“No, I don’t… wait… Wait a minute, please.” Elenor set her cell phone on the desk in front of her and went to pull her suitcase out from under her bed. She had found a paper-bound package in her suitcase when unpacking and hadn’t been able to explain where it came from. She’d wanted to open it, curious about what it was, but then she’d found the note tucked into the string tied around it. It had said not to open it until the time was right and that she’d know when the right time was.

She found the small, brown package in the pocket of her suitcase and pulled it out, sitting back on her heels. And then she remembered Elizabeth was still waiting on the phone and scrambled to pick it back up.

“Hi, sorry, I’m still here.” Elenor said, a little breathless.

“Did Grandma Dot give you something then?” she asked, sounding excited.

“Um, yeah, I guess so. I found a package in my suitcase when I was unpacking here. I haven’t opened it though.”

“Why not?”

“There was a note telling me not to open it until the time was right.” Elenor explained, wondering if she should have just opened when she found it.

“Oh. Yeah, that sounds like something Grandma Dot would do. So are you going to open it now then?” Elizabeth asked, sounding a little demanding.

“Um, yeah. Just give me a second.” She pulled the phone from her ear and turned on the speaker, then set it back on her desk. She untied the neat bow on the string and unraveled it from around the package, setting the string aside. Then she found the seam where the brown paper had been taped and pulled at it, ripping the paper away. She frowned, confused when she saw what was inside.

“So what is it?” Elizabeth prompted from the speaker of the phone.

“It’s a notebook?” And it was. A small black notebook, almost bursting at the spine from how much had been inserted between the pages, held closed by an elastic band.

“Well, what’s inside? Obviously Grandma Dot thought it was important and wanted you to have it.” Elizabeth said, beginning to sound a little impatient.

“There’s a lot here. It’s stuffed full of things. It will probably take me a while to get through it all. Can I look through it and call you back?” Elenor asked, setting the black notebook down on the desk next to her phone.

“Yeah, sure that’s fine. You can reach me at this number. Call me when you’re ready and we can talk more about flying you up here to New York.”

“Yeah, okay. That sounds fine. I’ll call you later.” Elenor said distractedly. She was suddenly eager to open the notebook and see what waited for her inside its pages.

She didn’t remember putting the phone down, just pulling the elastic off the notebook so she could open the front cover. A light blue envelope slid to the desk, her name written on the front. She set the notebook back on the table and picked up the letter, cracking the wax Mrs. Dorothy had used to seal the envelope.

Elenor pulled the folded paper from the envelope and opened it, almost afraid to read it, but also a bit excited to see what it said. She’d always loved watching Mrs. Dorothy writing letters and sealing them with wax and a bee-shaped stamp. She had always wondered who the old woman had been writing to with all those letters. Especially because she never seemed to get any in return. Now she knew where at least one of the letters had gone.

After she read the letter, she read it again, just to be sure she understood what she had just read. And then she went to find her father.

~~~~~

A month later, Elenor stood in front of the large, old house she had shared with Mrs. Dorothy up until about a year ago. The house that now belonged to her.

When she’d read through the small black notebook Mrs. Dorothy had secreted away in her suitcase when she moved out, she had been in disbelief. The ailing old woman had left her the old house and $20,000 to fix it up. Her only stipulation was that the house had to stay historically accurate.

And when the house was finished, Mrs. Dorothy wanted Elenor to write her life story. It had all been explained by the letters and journal entries she had found in the little black notebook. And there were so many more little black notebooks to be found, tucked away in the big library on the second floor of the grand house.

Elenor had talked with her father about it all, and he had agreed that she needed to do this. Both for Mrs. Dorothy and for herself. She had always been happier while living in New York. Especially while living in that big, old house with Mrs. Dorothy. And now she owned the house and could be happy and write whenever she wanted. In the meantime, it was time to start work on restoring the beautiful house’s former glory.