How Did It Get So Late So Soon?

F3 Cycle 107
Prompt: Write a story about a character's life-changing event and include December, blizzard, secret, clown, doughnut
Genre: Any
Limit: 1,500 words (word count: 1,096)
Deadline: Wednesday, December 5th, 10:00 pm.m CT

Spectral clouds of steam rises from untouched cups of coffee in the growing darkness of the small bedroom where people walk in and walk back out with boxes bearing Sharpied labels like "Goodwill" or "Send to Cousin Gina." They use hushed voices that are meant to be respectful and to Shelly just sound funerary. Someone turns on a lamp and she flinches at the sharp click. Her brother walks into the room, trailing crumbs from a half-eaten doughnut.

He's so calm, she thinks. Acting almost unaffected by his mother's death, John has taken over the job of directing the packing of her things and contacting a realtor about selling the house. And he's just walking around, drinking coffee and eating all of the pastries while she is sure she is slowly drowning in her growing grief.

The last room to be emptied of Joyce Lake's belongings is the room across the hall, which she used to share with her husband. After his death, quite a number of years ago, Joyce moved to the small guest bedroom. She kept the door closed to her former room. As far as Shelley knew, her father's belongings were still in there, trapped in a fourteen-year-old time capsule. Even after her mother was diagnosed, and they insisted on trying to get her to move back into that room, if only because the bed was bigger, Joyce refused.

Here it is, December, a couple weeks before Christmas, and it's up to Shelley to finally bring whatever her mother has shut up in that room into the light. Deciding that she has put it off long enough, she moves away from the little window, across the now empty room to the hallway, where some neighbors are handing down boxes in the stairway.

"Jim?" she asks a heavyset man holding a box labeled MISC in block letters, "Do you have any more boxes?"

Jim looks up, obviously surprised. Shelley realizes she hasn't seen the man who lives across the street from this house in several years, and they both look like unfamiliar versions of themselves. "Oh, yeah, they're in the garage." There's an awkward silence for a moment, as he seems about to make some remark about how sorry he is about her mom, but Shelly just smiles a little and nods. He moves over to let her pass on the stairwell, and as she walks past the living room doorway at the bottom of the steps she can hear the local weather report calling for a blizzard to pass through that night. Great, she thinks. This is just what I needed.

***

Propping the folded boxes in the hallway, Shelly opens her mother and father's bedroom door. She pauses in the doorway, feeling like a trespasser. She strips the bed and packs up the items on top of the dresser her parents shared, emptying the drawers and the closet of her father's clothes. Shelly briefly wonders why she would have left those things here, but she realizes she'll never know what was behind her mother's sudden abandonment of this room and her father's belongings.

The room is warm and feels stuffy, so she walks over to the window, thinking that she'll just open it a crack. It's stuck. She pushes harder, but it won't budge, and as she shifts to get a better grip her foot knocks into the little table in the corner. Something falls to the floor with a thud, and when Shelly looks down she sees the little figurine shaped like a clown that was her father's last gift to her mother, for her birthday. It was several months before he died, and they had all gotten together for dinner at the house just before her brother moved out to Chicago for that promotion.

She bends down to pick the tchotchke up, grateful that it appears to have escaped damage. There's a little key at the base, and when she turns it a Stephen Sondheim tune begins in tinkling notes. As she kneels by the bed, she notices a small box in the dark space near the wall. It's the only thing that appears to have been stored there. Shelly reaches down for the box, feeling a layer of dust on her fingertips. It's a faded shoebox, with the price tag still stuck to the side.

There are photographs inside. People Shelly doesn't know, faces she does not recognize. Most are of a pair of girls, with enough of a resemblance in their upturned noses and fair hair to see that they are obviously related. They are featured at various ages at Christmas, at birthdays, in the park, with uncertain smiles that develop into surly pouts, as time seems to pass. Under the sepia and black and white photos, which aren't labeled, Shelly finds letters, addressed to her father, but not to this house. There is a Post Office box listed, and the return address isn't familiar to her. They don't know anyone in California, she thinks. Do they?

She is hesitant to open the first letter, which is discolored with time and water stains, suddenly not sure she wants to know why this box is hidden away in this room, why these letters are so secret that they could not be sent here to the house that she grew up in and that both of her parents have died in, that was their home.

Her hands are shaking by the time she finishes reading. She doesn't realize how tightly she's clutching the paper in her hand or how long she's been siting on her mother and father's unmade bed when her brother John knocks gently on the doorframe. She jumps a little, and he laughs. "Scared ya?" She forces a smile and stuffs the letter back in the box.

"What's that?" John asks, coming over to her to look at what she's holding.

"Oh, nothing. Old Christmas newsletters. Junk."

The sound of voices downstairs brings her brother back to the doorway. "C'mon, the Wassermans are leaving, and Mr. Kenning wants to pack up the rest of the boxes before it gets too late." He looks around the bare room. "It's weird seeing it so empty."

His voice sounds sad, and Shelly realizes for the first time that he's being himself, acting like the casual goofball, because he thinks he needs to be the stronger one. I can't tell him, she thinks. He idolized dad, this would spoil that. She resolves to not tell him about their father's other family, the one whose lives are contained in that little shoe box.