Nobody in the family knew this was the second
time I'd rifled through Grandma's possessions, though I sought a
different kind of value back then. It wouldn't change anything. None of
them stepped up to spend the night alone in her creaky two-story with
the narrow staircases and the spiders as large as my fist.
Not the way they found her.
The cellar loomed over me like the crushing walls of a booby-trapped tomb as I shivered in the winter draft blowing from the cracks. I glanced through the contents of the waterlogged box in my arms as I hauled it up the steps, hoping the ancient photos and yellowed papers would distract me from sifting through the circumstances of my grandmother's death for the third time that hour.
They found her in the big recliner she used to rock me to sleep in, the one by the fireplace with the red wings at the top. The detective said she looked so peaceful, so content, that it might have just been her time if it weren't for the mosaic of bruises and shattered bones around her head and shoulders.
My foot set down on something hard two steps from the door and I slid, throwing my weight into the wall to keep upright. Pain shot through my elbow where it hit the concrete, and I craned my neck around the box at the little wooden duck. It stared up at me with an innocent grin, and I had to re-balance my load to bend over and grab it.
The police had said there were no signs of forced entry, no broken windows or locks, no muddy footprints on the floor even though it had been raining for days before the neighbor found her. That neighbor had a key, of course, but she also had an alibi. It was almost as if my grandmother had fallen down the stairs from the kitchen to the cellar and still somehow crawled back to her favorite comfy chair to settle in for the longest nap of her life.
Or perhaps, I thought as I reached for the little toy, someone placed her there.
I glanced up in time to see the yellowed fingers wrapped around the door, just before it slammed against my face and sent me tumbling into the darkness.
Not the way they found her.
The cellar loomed over me like the crushing walls of a booby-trapped tomb as I shivered in the winter draft blowing from the cracks. I glanced through the contents of the waterlogged box in my arms as I hauled it up the steps, hoping the ancient photos and yellowed papers would distract me from sifting through the circumstances of my grandmother's death for the third time that hour.
They found her in the big recliner she used to rock me to sleep in, the one by the fireplace with the red wings at the top. The detective said she looked so peaceful, so content, that it might have just been her time if it weren't for the mosaic of bruises and shattered bones around her head and shoulders.
My foot set down on something hard two steps from the door and I slid, throwing my weight into the wall to keep upright. Pain shot through my elbow where it hit the concrete, and I craned my neck around the box at the little wooden duck. It stared up at me with an innocent grin, and I had to re-balance my load to bend over and grab it.
The police had said there were no signs of forced entry, no broken windows or locks, no muddy footprints on the floor even though it had been raining for days before the neighbor found her. That neighbor had a key, of course, but she also had an alibi. It was almost as if my grandmother had fallen down the stairs from the kitchen to the cellar and still somehow crawled back to her favorite comfy chair to settle in for the longest nap of her life.
Or perhaps, I thought as I reached for the little toy, someone placed her there.
I glanced up in time to see the yellowed fingers wrapped around the door, just before it slammed against my face and sent me tumbling into the darkness.
