TBC Publishing Pride Month Flash Fiction Challenge #5

TBC Publishing Pride Month Flash Fiction Challenge, 5 of 30

Title: Grandma’s Love Letters

Author: R. Scott Tyler

Genre: Mystery

Word count (500 max): 479

I was in a dark mood after my grandmother’s funeral. She was 84 years old when her heart finally gave out. She’d lived with my mom and dad for the last ten years of her life after my grandfather died.

She always had a lot of friends, including card players, coffee drinkers, and a book club that read a wide range of books. The book club met in her small suite (a bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room) in my parents’ house and drank coffee and ate treats every week during their discussion of whatever new book had taken their fancy last week. They were mainly voracious readers who finished several books a week.

The last book they read was still on her bedside table. It was called “Remembrance of Lost Loves.” It was well-worn and looked like she’d read it many times.

The Saturday after my grandmother’s funeral, I went to my parents’ house to go through her things in the attic, and I came upon an ancient Smith Corona typewriter that had been packed away in its original packaging. Being a writer and interested in the feel of the keys on a relic much older than myself, I pulled it out of the box.

The typewriter was covered with a small quilt I remember my grandmother making when I was a kid. There was a small bundle of letters to and from someone named Charlie, whom I assumed, from the content, was one of her early boyfriends. To my surprise, there was a letter in the typewriter. It was half written, and the paper was permanently curled around the platen, yellowing and crispy with age.

I carefully unrolled the sheet from the platen and read it. It was a “Dear John” letter, saying basically that she could not see her (I assumed she meant Charlie) anymore. I figured the pronoun “her” was a typo. Maybe she planned to white it out later.

I came down the attic stairs carefully, with the bundle under my arm, and yelled to my mom. “Hey Mom, do you remember Grandma talking about an early friend of hers named Charlie?”

Mom came into the living room, wiping her hands after washing the dishes. “Sure, I do. My mother often talked about Charlie when I was a kid. They were close until Mom married your grandfather.” She answered.

She put her head back in thought and added, “I believe Mom said Charlie moved to California just before her wedding, and she lost track of her.”

“Her?” I replied.

“Yes, Charlie Wisenberger was her closest girlfriend in her early twenties, from what your grandmother told me,” Mom stated. “I always felt bad for Mom because she didn’t think she could continue her friendship after she got married. I suppose they didn’t have the money for either traveling to visit or maybe even for postage.”

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