To You, 25 Years From Now

Edyth didn't want to be here anymore.

Every step forwards on the carpeted floorboards felt like a step backwards into time; into a part of her life she had renounced from her mental history books. The choking smell of cigarette smoke still lingered on the familiar faded, sagging furniture, and the heaters installed throughout the home still rattled like maracas. It gave her a headache just being in the same space again. Sweat was already pooling under her bra and between her shoulder blades, but she had only just stepped inside. The air simply felt too stale, too stuffy, too much. Everything in this house was too much.

"Edyth, why don't I brew us some tea while you go through your father's things? I'm sure it's going to be a while before we get everything organized."

Edyth-shocked back to the surface of her mind-nodded robotically to her aunt's suggestion. She had entirely forgotten that she was accompanying her; she was standing in the same room as her in fact. Edyth raised a gloved hand to her copper braid to steady herself, but even with physical confirmation, she could not quite convince herself that she was back here after all these years.

"The first few boxes are in his bedroom, dear," her aunt said. The gentle wrinkles on her pale face crinkled in a pattern of sympathy. "Just be careful with all the equipment. Last thing we need is a pile of broken glass."

Right. Edyth was here just to ruffle through a few boxes. Nothing more. She wasn't going to be put under another stifling lamp light or told that she was going to be alone again for dinner.

Edyth made her way down the long, dark hallway to her father's old bedroom where for the first 16 years of her life she had listened to the faint tinkling of glass echoing through the walls. No matter what time of day or night, even during holidays.

Stepping into the brightly lit room covered in tacky Victorian wallpaper, Edyth found the boxes piled onto a large wooden desk that dominated the center of the room. It was more suited to be a dinner table, but she’d never seen her father eat inside this space. Truthfully, she had rarely seen her father eat at home at all.

Colorful stains covered the wood and several hairline cracks branched out from the center. The boxes sagged where they had been placed on the table, their contents in danger of slipping through.

Edyth cradled the first box into her arms and carried it to the tiny cot shoved up against the far wall, being careful to maneuver among the piles of papers, files, books, beakers, and Erlenmeyer flasks on the floor. She took this all in slowly, not wanting to overwhelm herself as she did earlier.

The box was filled to the brim with old wire-bound notebooks whose pages smelled of chemicals and charred ash. Already she wanted to put the box down and give up just from inhaling that all too familiar scent, but she gritted her teeth and dug in, keeping her gloves on to prevent her skin from absorbing the smell.

"Tea, dear."

Edyth jumped, the box shaking violently as she threw her head up to see her grey-haired aunt holding out a steaming cup of herbal paradise in a delicate china cup.

"Oh! Thank you, Mary Anne. That was quick," Edyth commented as she took the drink.

Marry Anne sighed, resting a hand on her hip. "When I walked in you were staring at that box with your hands frozen in it as if you'd seen a ghost, and it's clear you haven't touched anything else. Are you sure you can do this, Edyth?"

Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she shouldn’t.

“His notes and research will be helpful to me and my career now,” Edyth said, trying her best to keep her voice level and sound. Her hands moved inside the box, pulling away notebook after notebook labeled with curious names like the Blood Study. “The college was very interested in his work.”

“I still can’t understand whatever for,” her aunt said, sipping delicately from her cup as her shrewd eyes took the room in. “I was under the impression that George was a hobbyist - not a serious scientist.”

Edyth wanted to tell Marry Anne everything; about the bright lights, the cold instruments, the needles, and the vials. In her heart she wanted it all to mean something, to make some sort of sense, but she knew that if she told anyone about her upbringing there would be too many questions that she couldn’t answer-no meaning that she could give.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Marry Anne placed her tea on the wooden table and then maneuvered over to a dark brown bookshelf that was crowded with textbooks. She reached up to the top shelf, grabbing for a small black notebook with a leather covering. Carefully, she brought it over to Edyth and held it out to her.

“What’s this?” Edyth took the notebook from her aunt, examining its dull black surface.

“It’s your father’s journal,” she said, picking up her teacup from the table and taking a long drink. “He told me to give it to you while he was in the hospital.”

Edyth frowned up at her aunt. “Why?”

Marry Anne shrugged. “I wish I knew, maybe the answer will be in the journal.”

Edyth looked down at the journal as her aunt left the room. Her heart was in her throat, hammering away and creating echoes down into her stomach that made her nauseous. Was this journal the answer? Would it explain to her the actions of her father?

Slowly, with shaking hands, Edyth unwrapped the leather string keeping the journal closed, and let the first page fall over into her lap.

It was blank.

Edyth flipped to the next page.

Another blank page.

She lifted the edge of the papers and let them flutter through her fingers, her eyes rapidly tracing every page that flickered by.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing was written in this journal.

Edyth exhaled, a small laugh escaping her. The sound in her grew, her laugh turning into a giggle and a laughing fit, and then into a scream of rage.

She stood and threw the journal across the room, her scream drowning out the sound of glassware shattering where the journal landed. She threw the box she had set aside, watching in satisfaction as the notes spilled out and got lost in the maze of book stacks and knocked over files.

She kicked and shouted and stormed through her father’s room. A room she had hated and feared all her life, but a room she had also longed to be in since she was a little girl; a room that should have been her father’s room, not a stranger's den of secrets.

Edyth slicked back her ginger hair that had fallen out of its braid, taking a deep breath. She took in the damage she had created and concluded it wasn’t much worse than the mess had already been. The glass, however, needed to be cleaned up.

Grabbing a broom and a pan from the hallway closet, Edyth set to sweeping up the shrapnel. It wasn’t until she had cleared the larger pieces that she found the black journal sitting open on the floor covered in a smelly liquid.

“Ah, dammit.” She picked up the journal and held it by one cover, letting the substance drip off of the exposed pages. “I should try to dry it off at least. I don’t want Mary Anne to feel bad.”

Edyth carried the damaged journal to the bathroom where she turned on the blow dryer hanging on the wall and carefully began to draw it over the wet paper. Tiny black stains began to appear on the paper, however, as the heat ran on.

“Oh, come on!” Edyth groaned, turning off the hairdryer and taking a closer look at the new damage.

But there was no damage at all. Much to Edyth’s shock and surprise, the black stains were in fact letters.

A chemical safeguard?

Heart pounding, Edyth ran back into the bedroom and searched the destroyed flasks for any trace of the liquid that had gotten onto the journal. Spying one mostly intact bottle, she brought it up a few inches from her nose and took a gentle sniff.

It’s...acidic!

Taking the bottle, Edyth went back to the bathroom and fumbled with the blow dryer, turning the heat on full blast as she carefully dripped the acidic substance over the first few pages of the journal. She watched with bated breath as the chemical reaction filled in the blank pages with legible written words.

It took half an hour before Edyth had gotten to the end of the journal. Her hands shook as she turned off the heat and slipped down onto the bathroom floor with the first page open to her.

“To my daughter, in 25 years.

If you are reading this, then I have passed away. Thanks to the uncontrolled cell division in my pancreas, my body was unable to keep functioning normally. No doubt you were told about my diagnosis, but I regret not informing you sooner. Cancer is no easy beast to overcome-or in my case-to live with and accept my death sentence.”

Edyth’s eyes watered as she continued reading onto the next few pages.

“I knew very well that I had passed on my genes to you; genes that were dysfunctional, weak, and dangerous. With modern medicine, we have been able to spot the parts in our DNA that predetermine cancer, but we have no way to stop it or reverse it.

It was my foolish belief that as a chemist and a scientist I could use your DNA sequence to find answers. For years I stabbed you with needles, drawing blood from my own flesh. I subjected you to experiment after experiment, hoping against despair that I could save you. What I didn’t realize in my blind desperation for some control over my own disease, was that I was doing far more damage to my little girl than any cancer could.”

A sob escaped Edyth’s throat, and she clutched her mouth with her hand, trying to shove down the toxic feelings bubbling to the surface.

“I should have been a father instead of a scientist. You deserved so much better than this wretched old man. But I know by now these words are probably hollow to you, so all I can do is to prepare you for the future. Buried under the old oak tree in our backyard is a safe that I had procured…”

Edyth gasped as she read on, her entire body set on an uncontrolled rollercoaster of emotions and action. She stood up on shaky legs, scrambling to find purchase. She sprinted down the hallway, past her shocked aunt, and burst through the back door, nearly taking it off of its hinges.

Gasping and crying, Edyth kneeled underneath the old oak tree and dug into the soft dirt with her hands, ignoring the pain of her fingernails breaking in her haste. It wasn’t too deep as the journal had described, and soon she held the safe in her lap, her legs and hands covered in damp soil.

With a rusty creak that echoed through her soul, the metal box opened. Inside, a giant wad of cash estimated to be $20,000 US dollars, a late birthday gift in the form of a silver necklace, and a black, empty journal awaited her.

“I entrust to you my life’s work, but most importantly, I pass onto you my love through this written journal. Use this money for any future treatments you may need, or fund your own scientific inquiries. And, as my mother once told me: keep your own journal, so that your children may one day understand your decisions; good and bad.”