Dear Edie

*via net_efekt

It's Friday. But I'm not up for the usual today. I'm up for the unusual.

So I decided to share another snippet of writing from my novel. I do hope you enjoy it. And if you enjoy it particularly and are interested in beta reading, let me know. I'm revising at present, but when I'm done, I want to find a few brave souls interested in reading start to finish.

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He stood with his hand on the door knob, looking back.  This place had never seemed so like home -- the dusty velvet curtains, shutting out the sun, the library table covered with topographies of Eastern Europe that he hadn’t put away, the worn in sofa, the mounted bug specimens he’d bought from an archivist hanging next to the paintings of seafaring ships he’d collected nailed to the wall without any obvious design. This was probably the last time he would lay eyes on this place and there was nothing to be done about it.

He took an envelope from his pocket, tapping it against his palm. He’d never written a will.  Not very wise for a man in his position.  Death comes anytime.  He knew that better than most. He’d just never seen the point to a will. There was no one in particular who he wanted to have his things. They could go anywhere after he was gone. All these things, they would be like dead scales a snake leaves behind when it sheds its old skin.

Still, a will was about more than a transfer of possessions. It was a last will and testament, but Boots never had anything to testify and no one to testify to. He didn’t have any words that he felt like leaving behind until now.

He had written a letter. What was impossible for him to say aloud was more bearable in ink and paper.

In the top drawer of his desk he kept stationery from Paris in the 1930s, gray linen with rounded edges, a white monogram embossed on the top of the page.  He was not immune to the hunter’s urge to pick up a souvenir here and there. When hunters brought back small things, Tempus usually overlooked the transgression. This stationery sat stashed in his drawer, waiting for a special occasion that had never come, but last night he pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer, picked up his favorite black pen and wrote: “Dear Edie”.

He wrote slowly in the best handwriting he could manage which was fluid from years of practice. He wanted to tell her something poetic, something that would make the stars fall, to write like Shakespeare, words like a warm fire on a cold night, like a perfect ending to a grand tale, even if it was a sad one. But all he could write was the truth. He signed his name at the bottom and folded each sheet neatly, squaring it away in a matching envelope and wrote her name on the front.

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Lovely Friday to you all!