Little Black Book of Love Letters

The smell of coffee hung heavy in the morning air as I pulled my jean jacket on quickly followed by a backpacked stuffed to the brim with books. “Bye Granny! The bus is here!” I hollered as I turned towards the door bumping into my great uncle as he was stepping through it, mail in hand. Letters and bills fluttered to the tile floor like falling leaves. “I am so sorry, Uncle Frank!” I mumbled as I knelt and began to collect the mail.

“Oh, hon. I’ve got this. Go catch the bus.” Uncle Frank spoke in his elderly southern drawl that seemed to get thicker with age.

“It’s alright uncle Frank.” I grinned up at him with a hand full of letters and shrugging off the heavy backpack. “To be honest. I hate riding that bus. I’d rather granny give me a ride to school anyways, but don’t tell her that I missed on purpose. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“So, this was a happy accident?” he whispered back conspiratorially with a wink. “And I understand completely. I grew up with her.” He chuckled a deep rumble before taking the carpeted stairs towards the kitchen. “Katherine you will never believe what I just did. I dropped the mail and it a scattered everywhere. Thank god that Chloe was here to pick it up before the wind took off with it. We’d have lost all of it, if it had taken flight. Why good morning, momma!” he exclaimed as he bent to kiss their elderly mother on the forehead then turned to see his sister, Katherine, cooking some eggs and bacon for them to eat.

“Did she catch the bus?” Katherine asked in that grandmotherly snarl that I both feared and loved her for.

“No! She was too busy chasing the mail. I can take her to school after breakfast.” He said as he pulled a chair out from the table and settled in.

“Oh, I will take her. Sit down and eat.” she interjected as I stepped into the kitchen lifting the handful of mail for her to see.

“You know, granny. I can miss just one day. I don’t mind staying here and playing Skipbo all day with y’all. Besides, big granny still hasn’t beat me in like a year!” I baited with a mischievous grin and a darted look in my big granny’s direction. She jerked her head in my direction a puffed up a little bit at the challenge as I shuffled through the mail. “Uncle Frank, you have a letter from Ellie MacDonald in Scotland?”

He reached for the letter and quickly opened it, pulling out several sheets of lined paper with a delicate script handwriting. I watched him as he quickly skimmed the pages, his eyes tearing up and his lip quivering as he turned each one before folding them back into the envelope. He sat there for a moment looking out of the bay window with a distant look in his eyes. The silence intrigued me. I had never seen him act like that. I wondered what had been in that letter, but how do you ask such a personal question?

“A friend of yours, Uncle Frank? How do you know someone in Scotland?” I asked as I stacked the fried egg pieces on to my fork attempting to sound nonchalant.

Frank looked over his shoulder into the living room where my granny and her mother had migrated to after breakfast to see if they were eavesdropping before replying. “Ellie was the love of my life.” He said, his eyes lighting with the memory. “We met whenever I was over there in the military at the end of the war. Tail end of the war. Hell, I didn’t even get over there until it was all said and done, but I still spent my tour over there. It was some of the best years of my life because I met Ellie. Dark brown hair, the greenest emerald eyes you’d ever seen, and the accent.” Frank sighed. “But it wasn’t meant to be. We were too different. It would’ve never worked. So, when my tour had ended I came home and Ellie stayed there. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch through letters when we could. We both married and had families. We lost touch for a while when life got busy. I thought that I’d never hear from Ellie again when it had been almost 5 years without a letter, then suddenly once showed up just as I was about to completely give up. Lately the letters have been coming more often than ever before. Ellie’s spouse has passed and the kids have moved on.” Uncle Frank had that distant look in his eyes. The look that said his body may be here, but his mind and soul were hundreds of miles away. Perhaps even decades away.

I sipped at my coffee in contemplation before interrupting his thoughts. “So.” I started, dragging the word out to a dozen o’s for emphasis. “What is keeping you from reaching out to her now? To going and seeing her?” He shook himself back into the now and gave me a warm smile.

“I think that it is a mixture of ‘not having the money’ and ‘fear’. Probably more fear than anything.” He said as he removed a black leather book from his jacket and pressed the letter between two pages. He kissed the book lightly, put it back in his inner jacket pocket and then walked into the living room to join his mother and sister.

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“That was six years ago.” I whispered to my partner detailing the memory back to him as we sat in the hospital waiting room.

“And you saw him receive the letters and put them into the book more than once?” he asked as he pushed his glasses back up his nose and raising an eyebrow.

“More than once? It was way more than once. Hell, he got those letters almost every month.”

“So, what is your plan exactly?”

“I’m going to take his little black book tonight while I sit with him and I’m flying to Scotland to track down Ellie. I have the money since I won that $20,000 at the casino a couple months back. I need to do this for him. Hell, Jack, he is calling out her name every night. He is apologizing for never reaching out after she said that she was ready to be with him and waiting for him. It’s absolutely heart breaking.” I stood and paced a couple of steps with nervous energy. “I’m leaving tomorrow.” I said as I looked back at his shocked face before his brow furrowed.

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“2 delays and 18 hours later I made it. I’m in Edinburgh.” I huffed into the phone as I left the terminal.

“Are you bitchy?” Jack asked chuckling on the other end of the line.

“Damn straight I am. That was the longest damn flight I’ve ever been on and I have to do it again. But on a good note, Edinburgh is beautiful.” I glanced around and absorbed what beauty that I could see before climbing into the awaiting cab. “I am exhausted but it shouldn’t take me long to find this Ellie MacDonald and the guy that I talked to on the plane said that I shouldn’t have a problem finding this place. That it’s East of Edinburgh in one of the suburbs and that it’s right along the beach. I can’t think of the name. It’s like those thick meaty mushrooms… you know what I’m talking about?”

“Morels? Button mushrooms?”

“Morels? No! The big fat ones that vegans eat on burger buns.”

“Portobellos?”

“Yeah, Portobello! Thanks for the life of me I couldn’t think of that word. The cab driver is looking at me like I’m crazy, I’ve got to go.” I spoke into the phone probably a little too loudly. I smiled at the old driver before giving him the address. “Brunstane Road North, Edinburgh, please.”

“That's mah neck o' th' woods, it is. Ah overheard that yer keekin fur someone wi' th' lest name Macdonald. Weel ye wilnae fin' a lack o' they.” He replied in his thick Scottish brogue. I stared at him dumbstruck, not quite sure what in the hell he had just said to me, so I awkwardly grinned at him again. He shook his head slightly a spoke slow, as though talking to a child. “There are a lot of them MacDonalds around here. What was the name? May haps I can help.”

“Ellie. She should be in her late 70’s. 5’9ish, auburn probably grey hair now, green eyes. My uncle said that she owned a shop on the corner close to the beach. Or that she used to own the shop with her husband, but the husband died and she closed the shop. Sorry, that’s all that I know of her.” I rambled out, subconsciously clutching the little black book in my jacket pocket. He cocked his head to the right slightly and squinted his eyes then darted a look in the rearview mirror. My stomach fluttered. “Do you know who I’m talking about?”

“Maybe” he said, but it sounded more like quick ‘Mibbie’, “So, here’s the thing. I know of a shop that was ran by a husband and wife by the name of MacDonalds on the beach. Lovely couple, they were. But, the wife’s name was Allison and it was Allison that died.” He spoke slowly.

“Okay. So maybe it’s a different shop? They said that it closed a while ago.”

“Yes. It closed about 15 years back after Allison had passed. Old Elliot said that it had been well beyond time for them to retire but Allison wanted to keep busy.”

“Hold on.” I spoke up. “Elliot?”

“That’s what I said, Elliot MacDonald. May haps your uncle knew Allison. Sometimes people called her Allie.” He spoke a little quicker than before, the brogue growing thicker with speed.

“Maybe” I opened the black book, my heart thumping hard in my chest, and ran my finger across the name at the bottom of the first folded page. “Love, Ellie”

We pulled up to the building about 20 minutes or so later. My eyes were heavy as the old cab driver whistled and announced our approach. “Looky there. That’s old Elliot right there taking out his garbage.” I looked out the car window as he pulled to a stop and saw an elderly man dragging his bins out of the door. The old cab driver stepped out and car and hollered “Alright there, Elliot!”

“Alright Jack.” The old man replied, straightening and brushing dirt from his shirt.

“This lovely lady has some business with you about Allison.” Elliot turned and looked at me as I exited the cab.

I smiled like I had found a long-lost friend and waved the cab away, as I approached and handed him the book that rested in my pocket. He looked at it and flicked through it before smiling knowingly back at me.

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“Wake up, Frank.” Elliot MacDonald whispered to my uncle as he blinked back to consciousness. Frank squeezed Elliot’s hand and a tear drop fell from his eye as I quietly excused myself from the room. Only turning back to glance through the window as they embraced for the first time in over 50 years.