Good morning all and welcome to a bright and shiny new week. I hope everyone is ready for it. We discovered last night that we now have several neighbors more inclined towards fireworks than we had last year. Our neighborhood is sort of in transition as some of the people who have lived here for thirty or fourty years start selling and families with young children move in to take their place. It is the cycle of the neighborhood. I’m hoping eventually it will mean more than a handful of trick or treaters running around at halloween. The few we get every year always look a little lost. Perhaps we’ll see an influx this coming October. But that is well into the future and today we have a writing prompt ready for us. Is everyone ready? Good, then let those timers go.
I kind of like this one. I think it condenses a lot and I would like to figure out the court case and the lies, but it seems like it could be fun to work on at some point. Not bad for a Monday morning. This feels like a great way to kick off the week. I hope your version was as successful for you.
Monday, July 5th: I sat down to ponder the question.
I sat down to ponder the question. Why was I here? There was nothing to keep me here anymore, not really. Mama and Daddy were both gone. The few family members I had remaining weren’t close. After the court battle most of them wouldn’t even look at me when we passed in the street.
The things they said about me in a court of law still rung in my ears. You’d think I would be the one shamed by them. Except of course I knew they weren’t true. They were lies made up so that the rest of the family could claim the business, the house, the land.
They claimed nearly everything of value along the way. Anything family related anyway. The only thing they couldn’t claim was what was in my name. At the time of the final court decision, my name held the orchard and an undeveloped plot of land. I also had a substantial bank account in my name that they couldn’t touch.
I had been working since before I could see over the counter in Daddy’s store. I worked in the back and received a small pay for the small jobs. Once my piggy bank was full Daddy walked me down to the First National bank and helped me open my first bank account. He was joint holder on it since I wasn’t old enough to have my own.
I put nearly every penny I earned into that account. Not only from my work at the store but all of the other odd jobs around town. I liked the fact that every month the bank kicked in a little interest as a reward for my saving ways.
When I turned eighteen Daddy insisted his name be taken off my account and that it stand in my name alone. I don’t ’now if he had a premonition about his scheming relatives, but after his death it was the one thing they couldn’t take.
They tried of course, but regardless of the lies they told, they couldn’t get past the bank manager’s records and the account history. Of course that bank account was substantially heftier now that both the orchard and undeveloped land were sold. Both were left to me by my granddaddy and had been in my name only as long as the bank account had been. The orchard, and it’s sales contributed to my account as well in their time.
However the family wasn’t going to be happy until they managed to get that too. So I sold it to them. I took great delight in making them pay top value for the land as well. They didn’t get their hands on the undeveloped land though. That I sold to a developer. He had plans for a shopping center and considered it a prime location. The fact that it was adjacent to the house and would now cast a shadow over the garden my Aunt Lila always envied was a source of comfort when I took the time to think about it.
But now that the land sale was done, the money transferred to my account, I was faced with the indisputable fact that there was nothing really keeping me here. I rented a small furnished place when I lost the house and the lease was only a month to month, easy to end and nothing permanent. The only keeping me in this town was habit. I didn’t have to stay.
The thing was, I didn’t have anywhere to go either. All I knew was in this town. Everything beyond its borders was a great white space of unknown. Before, I never even thought of leaving. There seemed no point. Now there seemed no point in staying.
Ten til Midnight 