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The Little Back Book

By Emily HydePublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Early winter in Clovis, New Mexico, Shawna sat on a bench outside of a funeral home. Taking a drag of her cigarette she looks up to see her father.

"Didn't expect you to come, Larry." Shawna said while flicking her cigarette to the ground. "I didn't see myself here either" said Larry.

Shawna stood up and grabbed her coat tight together as she walked inside the small, old mortuary.

She stopped in the Main Room to look at the pictures of her mother that were carefully displayed on the linen covered table. Shawna thought to herself "What a joke, these pictures look nothing like here... How old are these?" she scoffed and walked into the chapel, turning to find the seat furthest to the back, she found a chair in the back corner where she sat and rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes, remembering her mother at the hospital muttering to her self in the hospital bed, rocking back and forth.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" Shawna woke up to see her sister. "Oh.. Sorry. I was just thinking." Shawna explained.

"You were thinking for 2 hours? You missed everything!" her sister shouted "Girl chill, I'm sure it wasn't that exciting" her sister grunted and walked away in a flurry of vulgar words.

Shawna stood up and gathered herself, walking to the exit she was stopped by her father who grabbed her arm and said "Cindy told me you slept through the funeral... Are you feeling okay?" .. "Is that code for 'high', dad?" said Shawna "No.. I just.. I wanted to give you... Here." he held his arm straight out displaying a key. "Mom's car?" she knew right away, the key had hung on the wall by their front door for years, no one with the heart to sell it or even use it. "I towed it here, I know you don't have a car and I know your mom wouldn't want it sold" Larry said nervously. "Great, thanks, this isn't weird at all" Shawna said sarcastically while snatching the key from his hand.

She walked outside to the near-empty parking lot and saw at the end that old blue Mustang that mom used to take such good care of. She gripped the key tight, making small strides walking to the car, not in any hurry to see, what she thought was just a new task from her father.

Shawna took a deep breath and put the key in the lock and turned it, she opened the door and sat down and the seat felt hard and lumpy she stood up and examined the seat and found a cut in the fabric, Shawna ripped it as hard as she could and started feeling around in the shredded foam that once was a car seat and was confused to feel something in there, she pulled out a small black notebook, she flipped through it quickly then tossed it to the back and leaned over to feel the passengers seat and smirked when she felt something else over there, she ran her hand around the seat but there was no cut, surprised, she dug threw her purse to find her pocket knife and opened it and stabbed hard into the center if the seat and drew the blade back towards her, she folded the knife and put it back in her purse then stretched the fabric apart with both hands and gasped in shock as she fell back into her seat. She looked forward out the windshield and took a deep breathe and then leaned back over to the passenger seat and dug out two, bank wrapped stacks of cash, both reading $10,000.

After becoming temporarily memorized, she snapped back into reality and shoved the money into her purse and looked around to see if anyone had seen her, then she suddenly remembered the notebook and swiftly turned to the back and grabbed the little black book -

grief
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