In Case of Emergency

Samantha frowned as she heard the floorboard by the window squeak loudly beneath her feet.

“Stupid old house,” she grumbled. “It’s always something.”

The old Victorian was a dilapidated beauty. Samantha had gotten it at a bargain since it was a “fixer”, as the realtor called it. “Fixer: being code for “about to fall down”. But it was all she could afford after the divorce.

The neighbor told her that the house was owned by an elderly woman who was born in the house and lived there all her life. She never married and had no living relatives, so upon her death the house was sold “as is” to settle the taxes and other debts.

The house might be in bad shape, but it was in a nice middle-class neighborhood with good schools. At least it had a pretty new roof and a giant backyard for her two kids to play in.

She loved puttering around the house, updating things as money allowed. With some restoration and TLC, the house would be a beauty. Samantha hoped that one day she would restore it to its original glory.

Although she was quite handy, one thing she couldn’t fix herself was the furnace. It was over sixty years old and had died last week. The repair guy came but he red-tagged it, deeming it unsafe to use and unable to be fixed. He gave her a quote of $8,000 for a new one. It might as well have been a million dollars.

It was fall and the temperature was dropping rapidly. Without a working furnace, they were relying on the fireplace to stay warm. She made a game of it with the kids, camping out in the living room so they could stay close to the hearth.

It was a short-term solution; there was no way they could live through the winter like that. She had to find a way to replace her furnace before they froze to death.

Samantha grabbed her toolbox out of the closet. She couldn’t fix the furnace, but she could definitely nail down that loose board in her bedroom. She might as well do it now before she had to pick up the kids from school.

She pulled back the corner of the word blue carpet, rolling it up until she reached the loose board.

She squatted down and studied it carefully; it looked a little warped. She wondered if she should replace it. She slid a flat head screwdriver under the edge of the oak board and lifted it up. To her surprise, the board popped right up.

She peered down into the space. Was there something in there? She slid her hand into the opening and there, under a bunch of dust, she found a small notebook. It had a sturdy black cover, held closed with an elastic band.

This was curious. She sat down and thumbed through the lined pages.

The book seemed to be for recipes, all carefully written in old-fashioned cursive. “Grandma’s old-fashioned oatmeal cookies” one page read. “Depression casserole” was another. Why would someone hide their recipe book?

Samantha flipped through the pages until she got to the middle. There was one page there that was different than the others.

“In case of emergency” was written across the top. Beneath it simply said, “bathroom vent”. What the hell?

Intrigued, Samantha went to the upstairs bathroom, dragging a step stool with her. She climbed up and carefully removed the cover from the vent, coughing as a bunch of dust fell on her. She couldn’t see anything, so she climbed up on the counter and used the flashlight on her phone to illuminate the dark opening.

Her eyes caught a flash of foil on the ceiling joist. There was a package covered by aluminum foil connected to the joist with black electrical tape. She never would have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking for something up there. Samantha carefully untapped the foil and opened it up.

It was another black notebook, just like the other one.

She climbed down and sat on the edge of the old clawfoot tub. This black book seemed to be more personal. It listed a family tree of sorts, with names and birthdates going back almost a hundred years. Each person had their own page, along with notes like “played football” and “had one child named Abigail” and “won first place for her cherry pie at the church bazaar”.

The last listing was for Edith Albridge, born in 1925. Samantha recalled her neighbor calling the previous owner Miss Edith, so she knew this was the homeowner who had died.

Besides her birthdate, Edith’s page only included one line: “Attic. Northeast corner”. Another clue.

Samantha rushed to the back hallway to find the trap door for the attic. She had never done more than poke her head up here; the space was dusty and creepy. It had a low ceiling, probably four feet high, and like a lot of old houses, it didn’t even have a floor. She looked at the narrow boards separating rows of insulation and sighed. Hopefully, she didn’t fall through her ceiling.

Lifting herself up into the attic she stopped to pull up the compass on her phone. She determined which corner was northeast and began to carefully crawl across the attic, balancing on the support boards.

She didn’t see anything obvious in the northeast corner; at first glance, it looked just like the southeast corner a few feet away. Was this just a wild goose chase?

Suddenly Samantha had the inspiration to lift up the large rectangle of insulation. She grasped the cardboard cover carefully, trying to avoid disrupting the fiberglass inside.

There in the farthest corner was a small metal box with a lock. Samantha shook it, wondering what was inside. She tried to open the lid, but the box was locked tight. She decided not to mess with it while balancing on a narrow board.

Replacing the sheet of insulation, she crawled back to the trapdoor and climbed down to the second floor. She sat on the floor in the hallway and looked through the two notebooks again, hoping for a clue how to open the box. She could bash it in with a hammer or something, but she didn’t know if there was something in there that could be damaged.

As she closed the first book, she realized that there was a little lumpy area on the back cover. Opening it up, she discovered a pocket, and pushed all the way down in the pocket was a tiny key.

She slid it out carefully and tried it in the lock on the box. It worked, opening with a small squeak.

Her heart was thumping like crazy. What was in the box? Why had Miss Edith created such an elaborate treasure hunt? She snorted at her own choice of words. Treasure? The box was probably going to be private papers like birth certificates and the deed to the house.

Samantha opened the lid and stared in the box in shock. The box was filled with money, organized in neat rubber-banded stacks.

Was this a dream? Maybe she fell through the attic floor and was in some hallucination-filled coma? She rubbed her eyes. Nope, she was pretty sure she was awake.

With hands shaking, she pulled out the first stack of bills and stared at the money. It looked like real money, fresh and crisp and green. She began to count the stack of $20 bills. It totaled $1,000. She thumbed through the other stacks; they all seemed to be the same.

She laid the stacks out in front of her, counting twenty in total.

Holy crap! She had just found $20,000 in cash in her attic! She couldn’t believe it.

$20,000 would be enough to replace her furnace and still have a nest egg available for emergencies. $20,000 meant that she would have enough money to get the kids Christmas presents.

To someone who made just over minimum wage, $20,000 was life changing.

Her eyes filled with tears as she noticed a piece of paper in the bottom of the metal box. It looked like it had been torn out of one of the two black notebooks, it was the same size and had the same lines.

There in Edith’s handwriting she saw a final request: “Whoever finds this, please use this money for whatever you need most. My only request is that you pay it forward when you can.”

Samantha held the note to her chest, the tears falling freely now. “I will pay it forward Miss Edith,” she vowed. “I promise you that.”

And she did.