The Scavenger Hunt

Everyone knew it was coming. The small things she was starting to forget, the constant sleep, the weird eating habits. Death is a cruel and heartless bitch. Grandma Elaine was already getting old, but it never makes it any easier. Almost reaching her 97th trip around the sun, Grandma Elaine finally slipped away in her sleep just a week before her birthday. 

Elisa was always so close with her grandmother, they knew everything about each other. They always had so much more in common than her and her parents did. But she doesn't like to think about that.  It always leads down a very sad memory lane on repeat. The car crash that shouldn't have happened. She told them so many times not to drive halfway up the state of California for her college graduation last year, but they insisted. But they never made it. Elisa had so many doors that tried to open to the past, but she fought them daily to try to forget. Maybe one of these nights she wouldn't cry herself to sleep with the painful memories that were always trying to turn that door handle. 

But over the years, Elisa learned to get used to this. Always having a painful memory on the back burner of her mind. As she hardly smiled because of that, she was more aware of when she did actually smile.

Walking into Grandma Elaine's bedroom brought up one of those rare smiles. So many memories flooded her mind as Elisa slowly walked around the room, taking in the smell of the Rosewood perfume that attached to what seemed like every piece of clothing her grandmother wore, the tasteful jewelry her grandmother was always so adamant about matching with every outfit, and the pastel colors of the bedding, curtains and throw pillows. This was always Elisa's favorite place to escape to. But it felt different now, knowing that Grandma Elaine wasn't right down the hall in the kitchen cooking up too much food for dinner, or scooping way too much sugar into her famous homemade sweet tea. But this had to be done. It took Elisa a week after the funeral to gather the courage to drive over and go through Grandma Elaine's belongings.  

She decided to start with the main dresser in the bedroom. Going through the drawers, she found her way to the bottom drawer, pushed past old prescription bottles for arthritis pills, individually wrapped peppermints that had to be at least a decade old, and so many faded receipts. Then, she came across a little black notebook. She didn't recognize it from anything she could remember. The silver spiral bound notebook had nothing on the cover, and was stuffed with torn out pages that had been haphazardly shoved back in. She sat on the floor, pulled the long, skinny pole of the nearby lamp closer, and opened up the notebook, careful to keep all the loose paper in its place.

Grandma Elaine always had the most exquisite cursive handwriting. Elisa always said she could have made a career out of it. Her grandmother never seemed to be that big into traveling or adventures, but looking at these pages, Elaine thought that maybe her grandmother had gotten into her fair share of traveling in her younger years. Each page had a series of numbers on it, and after a few minutes, Elisa realized they were coordinates. Longitude and latitudes. Her mind immediately began thinking of all possible scenarios that this would make sense in. Was Grandma Elaine planning something? Maybe it was a map, or maybe it marked all the places she had lived throughout the years. Whatever it was, Elisa was too curious to ignore it.

In total, there were ten entries, each with its own set of coordinates. After looking a few up on her phone, she wrote down where each one was located, all in different states across the U.S. Feeling like she didn't know her grandmother as well as she thought, Elisa could feel a smile begin to form. She was ready to go on an adventure, and ready to see what Grandma Elaine was hiding.

One week into her two-week break from work to deal with everything after the funeral, Elisa had one week to go on this random road trip to find out what her grandma was up to. After looking up all ten sets of coordinates, she realized that quite a few were not too far from each other, only hours apart. She packed a backpack, locked her apartment door, hopped in her blue Cherokee Jeep, and punched in the first set of numbers. Four hours later, she starts to realize where she's headed. Still in California, she reaches the town of Redding. The whole family used to rent a cabin on the lake every summer up here. They were always able to get the same cabin as not that many people thought Shasta Lake was the summer spot to be. As Elisa pulled to a stop at the cabin, it was starting to get dark out. No one seemed to be inside, it was still a bit cold outside for summertime vacation parties anyway. She wondered if the owners still hid the key in the same spot under the decorative lantern by the door. To her surprise, the key was still there. She unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

Thinking back, Grandma Elaine was always so particular about having the master bedroom every year. Elisa always thought it made her feel like she was still the center of attention, as Grandma Elaine loved the spotlight. But now, Elisa was wondering if her grandmother always wanted this room so that no one else in the family would ever find whatever she might be hiding. Why else would she write down a location in such an odd format? Looking around the master bedroom, nothing looked out of the ordinary. Dust collected on the flat screen TV, the bed was made, curtains down, and the closet was shut. The closet. Obviously. Elisa walked over to the sliding door, when one of her footsteps landed on a creaking floorboard. She paused, thinking how this is literally just like in the movies. There has to be something under the floorboards. She needed something to use to get those floorboards up. Her first thought was the garage. There's tools in there. After rifling through old tool boxes, she found a slightly rusted crow bar. Perfect. Back upstairs, and trying not to ruin the floor, Elisa tried to find which floorboard was the loosest. After about fifteen minutes, one of the floorboards finally gave in. She got it to pop up, and she could feel her heart beating in her head. She didn't know what to expect. Knowing her, with all her bad luck and painful past, she'd find a body part, or an empty container that did hold something, but someone beat her to it. But regardless, she was here. Moving the floorboard out of the way, Elisa was surprised to find an envelope with twenty crisp, brand new one hundred dollar bills. She was in disbelief. This kind of thing doesn't happen to her. She sat there for a minute trying to pull any memory she could that would make sense of this and her grandmother somehow connecting. Putting the floorboard back in its place, she took the envelope of cash and set it on the nightstand, and decided to get some sleep. She could figure things out in the morning. 

Hardly getting any sleep, Elisa woke up and realized two things. The first thing is that if her grandmother did in fact hide money, now that her grandmother was no longer here, the money would sit under the floorboards forever hidden. She had a feeling that Grandma Elaine wouldn't want that to happen, it was meant to be found. Which led to the second thing Elisa realized. This is literally a scavenger hunt, or a treasure map. Elisa was beginning to have a whole new mindset when Grandma Elaine crossed her mind, and felt another of these maybe not so rare smiles anymore as she locked up the cabin, put the key back under the lantern and started toward the next spot on the list.