Morning all. Things are settling into the groove and five day weeks no longer seem strange. It turns out I just had to get my brain out of January, who knew? So let’s see what this Friday morning’s prompt brings us shall we? Timers at the ready and off we go…
I do love a good family secret and this one looks like it could be fun. I’ll need to have a good think about it, but I love having a Friday prompt that I need to think about. I can ponder at lunchtime and make notes over the weekend.
Friday, February 2nd: The box was filled with old photos.
The box was filled with old photos. He cautiously flipped through them not wanting to damage any of them. He expected to see younger versions of the people he knew. He expected to see relatives with similar facial features but forgotten names who died before he was born. There was none of that. He couldn’t identify anyone in the photographs.
The most recent ones in the box were taken twenty years prior. He would have been five years old and yet a smaller version of himself was n where to be seen. He looked for his parents. They weren’t there. He looked for his grandparents, but they too were missing. And none of the people looked like them either.
He heard a sound behind him and turned. “Hey,” he said, seeing his uncle. “Aunt May had me clean out the closet and I found these photos. What do you want me to do with them?”
“I will take them,” His uncle said. A deep frown crossed his face when he looked at the box. He slipped the lid on it and handed the box over.
“So whose photos are they,” he asked. His uncle’s frown eased once the box was in his hands and John could see that his uncle pulled the box in protectively.
“They were left behind when we moved in,” he said. “We meant to pass them to the former owner but could never find them so they went not the closet in case someone came looking. I guess we forgot them.”
“Oh,” John said. He nodded. “I wondered why no one was familiar.” He looked back to the closet. “I don’t suppose the old golf clubs were theirs too?”
“No those were mine. I will take them with me and deal with them.”
Still clutching the box with one hand John watched as his uncle walked over to the closet, pulled the gold clubs from the closet and walked out with them and the box. John listened to the receding footsteps. They weren’t quick or any heavier than before. They were the solid paced steps his uncle always used, and yet somehow he felt that his uncle was in a hurry to get the photos away from him.
He shook the thought away. “Why would he worry about someone else’s’ photos?” It was a stupid idea and he turned back to the closet. Still as he took out stacks of old magazines and suitcases well past their prime and repurposed for storage rather than travel, John found his thoughts turning to the box of photos. Perhaps it was his uncle’s frown, perhaps it was something he saw subconsciously while flipping through them, but he felt there was something to the photos. It tickled the back of his mind as he worked, like the dust tickled his nose making him want to sneeze every few minutes.
He somehow couldn’t get the box out of his mind.
When the closet was empty, he stopped. John took a deep drink of water from his water bottle. He knew he would have to get his aunt’s approval before deciding what could be placed back into the closet and what could go to the local charity shop. He smiled as he envisioned placing each item before her like an offering and then hearing her decision. Then he realized he could hear his aunt and uncle talking, their voices drifting up through the vents.
“How could you let him go into the closet May?” His uncle asked.
Ten til Midnight 