For someone who needs it,

“They’re vultures!” The woman’s aged voice whispered and creaked like a draught through the once splendid home that threatened to slide apart around them. Her hand instinctively caught her layers of pearls and gold strings at her neck as though it gave her strength to proceed. Her figure tucked back into her high upholstered chair. Thin delicate fingers lightly entwined the necklaces as her eyes darted away from her guest and to the fireplace in deep thought.

The shadows of the late-night clandestine meeting danced on the bare tattered wallpaper in the dark foyer. Edith Montgomery was at the end of her life. Her sons had squandered the family business, and when they could no longer squeeze away any more profit from it, they turned to their mother, stripping away every dollar’s worth until not much stood but the derelict abandoned estate, empty save for the once regal upholstered chairs the two shadowed figures sat in for this midnight secret meeting.

“I’ve sold the land, Thomas. You are the only person I trust.”

Thomas, Edith’s lifelong confidant and best friend, furrowed his brow and let forth a plume of smoke from his pipe. His silence was validation. He had watched her children’s greed devour her and kill her husband from stress and grief. He had too much pain and shame for not seeing it before it got to this point.

“This is going to lead someone to the last of everything I have, $20,000 cash from the sale of this land we sit on, and I want to make sure it goes to someone who needs it the most. Please. This is my last wish.” She said, holding up a fresh and new smelling notebook, it’s black leather binding was crisp and untouched fresh from its cellophane wrap.

“But for who?” Thomas asked.

“I guess, you may know when you see it. Maybe, when I get to the other side, I’ll tell you. Oh, I am quite sentimental about all that these days I suppose. I am not yet sure how I can help any happenings on the south side of god. I guess I shall soon see firsthand though. I don’t have much time left Thomas. That’s why we meet here, where it’s safe.”

Her tongue pursed out between her lips as her shaky handwriting blessed the page by firelight with a poem. “I had to leave it blank until the very last minute to ensure it got into your hands.” She pushed the book into his hands with a triumphant, if tired, look of fulfillment on her face.

Thomas sat many days later in deep thought at her last wishes. He had watched over the past week at the battle that erupted after Edith’s passing and burial, which he paid silent witness to with all respect he could muster while her sons bitterly fought with the small, timid attorney who had the displeasure of informing them their inheritance would be but the bill of her funeral. They paid in protest before storming out of town with a string of vile and cross words most here had never even heard before. The small town mourned Edith’s passing, she was well known by most everyone, her name emblazoned on the library her funding helped procure and many children weeping with fond memories of her holiday candies and kindness. She would be sorely missed by them, at least, Thomas thought. The people that mattered the most would care.

He sat in the diner thinking all these things over. Everywhere he turned in his town he saw people who could indeed put it to good use. The book sat heavy in his breast pocket begging being lent to just about everybody.

And there, sipping his coffee and deep in thought, he would meet young Ellis Jr, the bright-eyed, big-hearted 12-year-old known well for his mischief causing in the town, son to single mother Marlowe and named for her late husband Ellis Sr. She was a sturdy and firm mother and endlessly loving making up for the love he had stolen from his father’s side so young, but it was hard for her working so much, giving him enough freedom to get into predicaments that sent his mother’s temples grey-haired quite early with the stress.

The pair indulged a meal together, laughing and chatting, Ellis taking to doodling on his napkin with his broken pencil, his mother reading out loud to herself job ads in the Sunday paper. Behind the bar, the young woman serving fresh coffee for Thomas took pause to hurry and scold the boy, pointing out the lead scuffs he left on the table. Marlowe was hot blushed and apologized endlessly over it using her own sleeve from her oversized grey hoodie to buff out the markings.

“It’s no trouble Marl, just watch the kid, or he’ll end up putting his art all over the walls and I’ll be the one fired for it.” Her name tag read Em, she had a thick voice and smiling eyes that gave away her fast reaction for a sort of admiration mixed annoyance.

“Oh, that wouldn’t be so bad, you could use some art in here, maybe one day they’ll even pay you for it huh, Ellis?” Marlowe said, spinning the situation to make light of it, the boy beamed up at his mom with pride and excitement, his brown eyes flecked like gold in the evening sun.

“If I make it that long ma’am, I would make you pay me double for yelling at me.” He joked. He had a fast wit but his words stung Thomas. The adults gave way to worry and hurried to change the subject and busy themselves again.

Em returned to her station, preoccupied with her tasks. Thomas asked, “What did he mean, about if he makes it?”

She pulled out a fundraiser jar stored beneath the bar, adorned with a colorful handmade poster, “He’s got some bad luck, sir, same way his daddy went too. We have a jar here for change if you want to help out.”

The poster read with highlights, ‘multiple cerebral malfunctions’ ‘help Ellis today’ ‘surgery not covered’.

Thomas threw the change from his paid tab in the jar and smiled his goodbyes at Em.

Thomas stood up and before taking his leave, stopped over at the booth the two sat in, pulling the little black book from his breast pocket.

“Son, if you mean to get your scribbles out, best to do it in here, so Em doesn’t get in trouble next time.”

Marlowe gave him a look of thanks, “oh wow it’s a lovely book sir thank you! But we can’t take that-“ she was cut off by Ellis excitedly giving her pleading eyes and pulling on her sleeve.

“Mooooooom, please! I need a sketchbook!” He gave her the best puppy dog fake he could muster, and Marlowe sighed.

“It’s no trouble, but I wouldn’t mind a personal sketch if you think you can catch my likeness, Mr. Ellis.”

The three sat as the evening sun submerged the street outside in powerfully golden rays and the young man offered Thomas a scribble of his own face with a handsomely mastered signature at the bottom and big THANK YOU on the back, and the man left the small family to finish their dinner in peace as the twilight set down.

Ellis sat doodling in the booth thoroughly transfixed with his sketching before his skimming brought him to a short poem scrawled in the back of the book.

“Oh, what’s this?” He asked his mom. The two looked over the poem in the aged shaky writing.

“I didn’t write this.” Ellis said.

“No, it’s signed Edith Montgomery. That’s the lady who founded the library! She did so much for the town when I was a young girl. So sad, she just passed. Her sons had stolen every dime from her.”

“What’s this mean though? Is this her secret spot?”

They sat together looking over the short poem.

Marlowe read out loud, “I met him by the river, we married at 23, he carved our names together on the old oak tree… There we spent so many years there, the happiest I’ve known, your happiness is laying there underneath the stone.”

Marlowe was lost in thought for a moment. “You know what, I bet this was her favorite place in the world. Yes, I bet she just wants someone to share the place that she enjoyed the most. The river... It’s usually slow and low this time of year. Hey, kiddo, you wanna go tomorrow, after school? We’ll have a picnic there in her memory?”

Ellis’s face lit up. “Yeah! I think she means, she was happy there, so we can be happy there too because it’s a happy place! I’d like that a lot. I can draw it for her and leave it by the tree.”

The two set out together the next afternoon. Following the winding and lazy river south, they sang songs while navigate a copse of new trees and dense waterside growth into a great clearing where the late sun filtered through large oak tree branches, making a perfect picnic spot. There, as promised on the oak tree was a heart giving tell of a great love that Edith Montgomery had experienced there. The two sat their blanket down and started spreading their early dinner, lightheartedly making jokes while Ellis took to doodling in his beloved black book. He pushed his back up to the tree and was alarmed to find a large rock shift under the weight of his hand.

“Oh! Mom look, it’s the stone from the poem maybe? Someone’s moved it, look,” he pushed it with ease back and forth over the loose dirt around it.

“How curious. Do you think she’s left you a treasure here? Maybe another sketchbook.” Marlowe lifted the stone to find a large tin coffee can stuck down underneath it in a neat little hole.

“Wait. We don’t know what could be in it. I said wait! Ellis- “

Ellis, never being one to listen much, had already dived his hands into the hole and pulled up the old coffee tin, shaking it about and listening for the contents.

“I dunno mom it doesn’t sound dangerous.” He said as she pulled it away from him.

“Here let me, just in case.” With mild trepidation, Marlowe pulled back the tight-fitting top of the container. She gasped and put back the lid.

“Ma? What is it? Mom!” Ellis bounced around annoyed that he couldn’t see the contents and that his pleas couldn’t seem to get through the thick amazement that thoroughly contained Marlowe at the moment.

Marlowe pulled out a neatly written note, in the same hand as their poem but written with more time and care on nice stationery.

“You have found my gift to you! With endless love, Edith.”

Rolls and rolls of hundred dollar bills were stuffed neatly into the tin, and in the afternoon sunshine under the oak inscribed with love, a mother wept in happiness, and child whooped in glee.

Thomas had no business to tend to in his old town, however, he felt drawn there in his old age, over a decade after the passing of his childhood comrade and confidant, he hoped to return home and pay respects at her grave and ready his own, and wind comfortably down in the shelter of nostalgia.

He parked and made his way into the little diner. The walls were alive with the artful manifestation of love and heart he had always felt deeply when he entered this town. Modern, and done with thoughtfulness, it was a timeless mural. Thomas made his way to a comfortable bar stool to order his coffee and paid compliments of the work to the man behind the counter.

“Thank you so much! Just finished it myself yesterday. I’m the owner! My name’s Ellis.”