As I got to work, the thought kept circling, would Elm or Cy miss me when I’m gone? Did Cy mean it when he said he’d stay with me? And for the latter I clung to his words. He’d called me his Pru, he told his family about us, openly, proudly, a bit too graphically blunt for my tastes but we could work on that. Did Cy mean it or was it simply to rib Elm?
It had felt like he’d meant it. All of it.
Holding onto the hope that thought gave me, I turned on Mom’s favorite music and dove in.
Chapter 7
The next few days were weird. Thanksgiving was nearing, right around the corner. I had my T day feast all planned out. I waffled on inviting Cy over for Thanksgiving, namely because I hadn’t heard a peep from him since he was thrown from my house.
Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Not a word from any being at the Tree household.
Once more I found myself feeling summarily dismissed from their lives.
Maybe they weren’t wrong. I had just had sex with Elm and shortly after embarked in a sex-athon with Cy through a snow storm, the latter partially motivated from a need, initially, if only acknowledged in the tiny recesses of my petty brain, to piss Elm off for the way he’d treated me post crazy sex romp that nearly destroyed me for all other men, though the other ninety-nine percent of my motivations were that insane draw I felt towards Cy.
Aside from large furniture items, I had the living room, my parents’ room, most of my room, the bathroom but for enough towels and toiletries to get me through, all packed up, labeled, and sorted.
Wherever Cy had stashed my clothes, it was not anywhere I’d uncovered yet. I was left the clothes he’d left here, what might be in his duffel bag— I didn’t know because I hadn’t touched it yet— nor his envelope or Elm’s box— Dad’s comfy shirts, mom’s yoga pants that were stretchy enough I could squeeze into them, and Dad’s thermal socks.
That left Dad’s office and the kitchen.
Struggling to decide, both filled with so many memories this was going to be a two rolls of toilet paper to catch the snot and tears kinda situation, my gaze drifted towards Elm’s box and Cy’s envelope.
No. I needed to finish this stuff. I could peek around with the box and note later, after. Yet… my feet carried me across the room and I found myself nabbing up the box and envelope atop it to plop down in the exact spot Cy had been in earlier.
Glancing towards my phone, I wondered if I should call him but then recalled for the millionth time that I didn’t actually have Cy’s number.
It would have been nice if someone had come by to help me fix my back door. The new latch I’d scrounged from the junk container under the sink was holding up well but it was merely holding it closed.
When I would have opened the box or the envelope, I hesitated. Glancing from the movie I had on for background noise on the TV to the boxes, I groaned. Turning the TV off, I grabbed up the box and envelope and walked them into Dad’s office, to set them square in the middle of his insanely clean, organized desk.
Plopping down into his office chair, I debated on where to start. The shelves, maybe? Or the documents, probably? Unearthing a couple empty filing boxes, I put them together and opened up his large file drawer. Dad was fond of ancient languages, so much so he taught me the less exhausting oneswhen I’d shown interest. There was no surprise when I found several different keys along with symbols he’d worked out. He was the brainiac of the family. I was lucky if I could keep up. I did share his love of languages— I knew just enough French, Spanish, German, and Klingon to know I didn’t have the brain to remember much of any of them. If I didn’t use it, after a while I lost it.
Frowning, I stared at a file folder thick with weird symbols with no key to decipher it. The first letter, the writing was different, the next more masculine. Pulling out Dad’s other files from the box I’d just placed them in, I compared them. The latter was definitely done by the old man.
Studying them, I couldn’t recall ever having seen them before, and Dad was quite fond of letting me in on whatever he was working on.
With a frown, I spread the strange symbols scribbled across the papers out.
The same symbols started off and ended, same as the other paper.
A greeting, a name? For the top ones, maybe the last ones too.
Huh.
I got so engrossed trying to puzzle it out, I lost track of the time.
Right when I would have called it quits, moving onto the next folder, there it was again, the same looking writing styles, Dad and this other author, but this was more script than symbols mixed.
Again, there was a fat file folder full of them.
A search online yielded zip for either language. It’s not recognized anywhere.
I’d been at this for hours. I was afraid to look at the time. I really should be finishing packing all of this up but I wasstumped, intrigued. Why had Dad not shown me these? Was it a made up language?
I was so engrossed, I yawned, downed the last of my soda, settled back to close my eyes for just a moment as my eyeballs protested, before getting back to it, and drifted off shortly after.
A soft humming woke me up. Wondering if it was the fridge on the fritz again, I popped awake, shooting up with a startled mumble. A paper came with me, flapping about as it clung to my cheek. Peeling it off, I scrubbed at my eyes, blinking owlishly.
