Morning all. Hope your week is going well. I am knee deep into a new story and absolutely loving it. But before I get on with my day let’s start things off right with the morning prompt. Timers set for fifteen minutes please.
Interesting. Always love those old family fights. No clue what this one was about, but I do like a mysterious letter.
Wednesday, May 8th: Mark had not been home in fifteen years.
Mark had not been home in fifteen years. When anyone asked he claimed that he was too busy and always planned to go. He made the same sorts of comments that he heard the others making about their families. He even, on occasion, let people think that his family was visiting him. Usually this ploy came about around the holidays when others looked at him with pitying eyes when he claimed not to be traveling.
The fact that he was not welcomed back was nothing he ever told anyone. He was not wanted in the family. He was not allowed to go back. That had been made very clear on the day he left.
When he left, he thought that in time, things might change. When he settled, he sent back contact information, an address and phone number should anyone feel the need to reach out. When he moved, he sent them an updated address. He never heard back. On his last move, he thought of sending a card with the new address. Instead he picked up an extra change of address card from the post office and sent them the same form that he sent to his utility company.
There had been no message back and as he had not moved since, that is where Mark left it. Most of the time he did not think of his family. It is only when the family heavy times of year circled around that they even entered his thoughts. June was not one of those months.
Family of any sort was not in his mind that morning in early June. Thoughts of his family didn’t even intrude. When the mail came, he saw the envelope. He registered the unfamiliar address, but still it brought no thoughts of family. Why would it. The address was local. It did not come from across the country where his family was located. There was nothing to link them.
He opened the envelope thinking that it was probably an upscale advertisement or another offer to buy his house. He slit the envelope with his letter opener and slipped out the single page. It was a letter from a lawyer.
The office was in town and he was asked to call and arrange a meeting at his earliest convenience. The meeting was in regards to the estate of the late Gerald Farley. Mark stared at the page. Gerald was dead.
Mark thought he ought to feel something. He couldn’t even bring himself to add any familial appellations to the name. He was not family any more, not really. He was Gerald.
‘And Gerald is dead.’
Mark set the letter down and leaned back in his chair, his eyes still scanning the typed letters on the page. He felt nothing. It was as though someone told him a stranger passed. A part of him thought he ought to offer sympathy to the bereaved, but he himself was not bereaved.
‘Why would his death cause me to get a letter?’ Mark thought.
Ten til Midnight 