Elliot was always different—always. He had trouble making friends in elementary and middle school, and his mother didn’t seem to be too interested in spending any quality time with him. His father had died when he was 4 and his mother was left to pay the bills and raise Elliot and she resented Elliot for needing so much care. He was almost too smart for his own good, and that wasn’t a quality that his Texas teachers seemed to pay attention to. It seemed there was only one person in this world that really understood Elliot: his Aunt Lucy.
Lucy was a very eccentric astrophysicist. In fact, she was the only female astrophysicist at her company in Tempe, Arizona. Elliot didn’t notice until he was older, but aunt Lucy was never the sociable type—especially around family. Being the only child in her family to go to college, Lucy just couldn’t relate to her siblings like she wanted to; they resented her for being smarter than them and their topics of conversation often seemed superficial and less than intriguing to Lucy. As soon as she could, Lucy moved far away from her family and started a job that she fell in love with. Lucy was content to only see her family on major holidays when her parents begged her to come home. But the first time she met Elliot, everything changed.
From a young age, Elliot gravitated towards Lucy. They just seemed to understand one another and even when Elliot was young, they could have theoretical conversations about why things were the way that they were. And as he got older, he became fascinated with learning about astronomy. And Lucy couldn’t have been happier to teach him. He didn’t need a friend in the world as long as he had his Aunt Lucy.
Elliot’s mother, Lucy’s sister, was the biggest critic of their close relationship. She didn’t understand how Elliot and Lucy had formed such a strong bond, perhaps even stronger than her own relationship with Elliot. The summer before his freshman year of high school, Elliot begged his mother to let him go stay with Aunt Lucy in Arizona. She reluctantly agreed, realizing a summer without her son was a summer without responsibility. Elliot spent the entire summer working with Aunt Lucy at her job, learning everything he could about science and astronomy. On weekends, Lucy would take him to culture festivals and lectures by great scientists at a nearby university. Elliot didn’t ever want to leave, and after a quick phone call to his mother, who had discovered life without her son was a life she enjoyed more, he wouldn’t have to.
The next 4 years of high school in Tempe, Arizona were everything Elliot could’ve hoped they would be. He continued to learn from his Aunt Lucy and she was able to secure him a spot at a local STEM school for motivated students who wanted to pursue higher education in math or science. Finally, Elliot had found a place where he felt like he fit in. When he graduated, Lucy gave him his most prized possession—her college Astronomy notebook. He loved looking through her drawings and notes and comparing it to his own. After high school, he was able to get a scholarship to the university in Tempe and Aunt Lucy was happy to have him still living with her as he pursued a double major in astronomy and biochemistry. They were a family, just the two of them, and that’s exactly how they liked it.
In the fall of Elliot’s senior year, while sitting in the student union studying for an exam in microbiology, he got a phone call from an unknown number. A police officer was asking him to make his way to the downtown precinct because they had some questions they wanted to ask him. When he arrived, an expressionless officer led him to an office where he sat down and told Elliot the news that made his heart stop beating for a moment.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your Aunt Lucy died in a car accident this morning on her way into work.”
He only caught about half of what the officer said after that, but it didn’t matter because Elliot’s world was spinning. The two of them sat in silence for a moment before Elliot stood up, thanked the man, and walked out of the precinct and back to his car.
He started his car and sat there for a very long time, not knowing what to do. He picked up his phone and called his mother for the first time in a very long time. A day later, his mother was touching down at the local airport and Elliot picked her up. Lucy’s house seemed so empty without her big personality. Elliot’s mother immediately began to go through her things, deciding almost nothing was worth keeping.
“We can donate it all, nothing here is really my style,” she declared.
Elliot didn’t feel like arguing right now. He hadn’t slept since he heard the news and he just wanted to go to bed. Elliot’s mother told him to get some rest and that she would wake him for dinner.
When he woke up, he wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but it was dark outside. He could hear his mother downstairs clanging around in the kitchen and his stomach growled so he went downstairs to see what she was making.
She was standing over a pot of soup, stirring it occasionally.
“Well hey there, sleepyhead. Sit down at the table, it’s almost ready,” she ordered. “Lucy didn’t have much in the way of groceries, but I was able to throw together some chicken noodle.”
Elliot sat down at the table. His eyes were swollen from the tears he had cried the night before, but as he looked around he noticed things missing.
“Mom, where’s the globe Aunt Lucy had sitting in the corner of the living room?” Elliot asked.
“Well I just figured we have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it so I took a few things to Goodwill. Just things that have no value to us.” She seemed happy to be throwing out her sister’s things, unaffected by her loss.
Elliot sat silent for a moment and his mother sat a bowl of soup in front of him. At that moment, he realized that Lucy’s college astronomy notebook had been sitting on the table the night before.
“The notebook that was laying on the table—where is it?” Elliot asked frantically.
“Oh, you mean that science stuff? It was all gibberish so I boxed it up and took it in.”
Elliot could feel his face turn red. “That science stuff?That science stuffwas the notebook Aunt Lucy gave me when I graduated high school!” Elliot began to yell. “I loved that notebook and you just threw it away without a second thought? God, you really haven’t changed a bit!”
“Elliot! You will not speak to me that way. If the damn notebook is so important to you, then you can go to Goodwill tomorrow and buy it back. No one else is going to buy that junk anyway.”
Elliot stormed back to his room, furious that his mother could be so thoughtless. Why had he even called her in the first place?
~
Elliot was standing outside the Goodwill doors when they opened. As soon as he was inside, he ran to the books section and looked through the hundreds of books on display.
Where is it?
When he couldn’t find it there, he figured they might not have shelved yesterday’s donations yet and he found a store employee.
“Excuse me, my mother brought in some donations yesterday and there was an item in the donations that she didn’t mean to include and I’m happy to buy it back, but it’s very important to me,” Elliot frantically explained. “Could you check in the back and see if it’s there?”
“I think I remember her coming in. We shelved most of those items yesterday, but what was the item?” the employee asked.
“It was a leather-bound black notebook. It was full of writings about science and astronomy.”
“It doesn’t ring a bell. Are you sure it was brought to this location?” she asked.
“Yes, positive. Could you just check in the back in case they didn’t shelve it yet?”
“Of course, I’ll be back in a few.”
Elliot waited, angry with his mother. He tried not to think about Lucy, and instead tried to think about how he could catch back up in class after missing a few days. He knew he was probably missing out on several assignments and important information, but he had too much to take care of now that Lucy was gone.
The store employee returned, empty-handed. “I didn’t see it in the back, so I’m sure they must’ve shelved it yesterday.”
“Surely someone wouldn’t have purchased it so quickly. Are you sure there is nowhere else it could be?” Elliot was becoming desperate.
“Hm…let me call the other employee who worked yesterday and see if she remembers it,” she said.
Elliot stood at the counter, bouncing up and down on his toes. He was nervous and couldn’t stand still. A few minutes later, the woman returned again.
“Sir, I’m really sorry but we sold that item yesterday. My coworker said she remembers selling it to a young girl who drove a red Ford Mustang, but that’s all she knows.”
Elliot felt the tears well up in his eyes. “Ok…thank you for checking on it for me.”
“I’m really sorry, sir.”
Elliot turned without another word and walked out of the store.
As he got into his car, he was getting a call from his mother. He ignored the call and texted his friend John, instead.
Hey man, can I come over?
Where have u been? It’s not like u to miss class. Ya sure. I’ll be home in 15.
Elliot started his car and left the Goodwill parking lot, having no idea where Lucy’s notebook could be but with a plan to find it.
~
John was a computer genius. Elliot and his classmates always joked that he could probably hack into the U.S. Government’s servers if he wanted to, but that he was too much of a wuss to ever do something that risky. If anyone could find out how many red Ford Mustangs were in Tempe, it was John.
Elliot was visibly upset when he arrived to John’s dorm room. He didn’t say a whole lot, but tried to explain the situation as best as he could without getting too emotional. John was happy to help and after half an hour, he had pulled up the result that there were, in fact, only three red Ford Mustangs in Tempe. Elliot didn’t stay long, but promised John he would fill him in on the whole story later.
Elliot left John’s dorm, got in his car and just started driving. He drove all over Tempe, looking for one of the three red Mustangs. After quite some time, he decided he would try again tomorrow. After all, he needed to come up with a plan of action once he came across one. He headed home and went straight to his room, not saying a word to his mother who was sitting in front of the television watching the evening news.
He opened his laptop and started researching methods for how to break into a car: the tools he would need, how to prevent the alarm from sounding, etc. He decided it was best not to take notes, in case things were to go wrong. He suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion come over him and decided to turn in for the night, hoping tomorrow he would have more motivation to execute his plan.
~
The next morning, he grabbed a wire coat hanger from the hallway closet and headed out the door. His mother tried to call for him as he walked out the door, but Elliot ignored her, still furious with her thoughtlessness.
He drove through neighborhoods and parking lots all over the city. After hours he hadn’t found a single car that even looked like it might be a red Ford Mustang. He was running low on gas, so he pulled into the Murphy station in a Walmart parking lot and that’s when he saw it, right there in the Walmart parking lot: a red Ford Mustang. He completely forgot about his almost empty gas tank and parked a on the edge of the parking lot, far away from any nearby vehicles. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped out of the car.
~
Elliot wore a black hoodie, tattered jeans, and a pair on Converse sneakers as he made his way through the parking lot. He saw the red Ford Mustang just a few rows over and bent the wire hanger he was carrying in his hand as he moved towards it, checking over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. He could feel the beads of sweat collecting on his neck and he wondered if anyone would question why he was wearing such heavy clothing in the mid-afternoon heat of the summer in Tempe. But Elliot knew there was no time to wait for a better opportunity—he needed to get into that car and he needed to do it now. He tried to move quickly, but not so quickly that he would draw attention. As he moved, he realized how many people were around him. Wal-Mart was not the most inconspicuous place to break into a car in the middle of the day, but Elliot tried his best to maneuver through the parking lot rows without catching anyone’s attention.
Although the walk was short, every second was nerve wracking. When he walked up next to the red Mustang, he could hear his own heartbeat. His hands shook as he made one last glance around the parking lot and jammed the bent up coat hanger in between the window and the door panel on the passenger side. Although Elliot had never popped a lock like this before, he had made sure to watch plenty of instructional videos on the Internet before attempting to do it himself. To his surprise, it wasn’t much different in reality than it had seemed online. In just a few attempts of wiggling the bent up wire around in the door panel, he was able to pop the door open without setting off the car’s alarm.
He didn’t think his heart could beat any harder, but when the door was open, he could feel it beating inside his chest. He knew he had to hurry—the owner of this car was not someone Elliot wished to meet today. He threw open the glove box and rifled through the papers inside. Then he moved on to the center console and the door pockets. As he searched the car, he could feel the lump growing in his throat and the tears welling in his eyes. His stomach felt like it was turning as he frantically looked through every orifice of the vehicle.
Where is it?
The car was pristine; no dents, no dirt, no trash. Elliot began to realize that there wasn’t really much to look through. He had searched the entire front half of the car, so he looked over the seat into the back and sitting on the backseat was a metal box.
Jackpot!
He grabbed the box, opened it up and began looking through it’s contents. As he looked closer, he realized he was looking through photos and paperwork from some kind of war. The photos were black and white and heavily worn. It was clear immediately that the owner of this car was not the owner of the car he was looking for. He closed the door and sat down on the ground, defeated. He felt his heart slow down, his stomach drop, and an overwhelming sense of sadness. He closed the box and put his head in his hands and he could no longer hold back his tears. He sat there for a while, so overcome with emotion that he forgot completely where he was. He no longer cared if anyone saw him. He was tired and he had failed.
“Is there something I can help you find, son?”
Elliot jumped up, startled. Standing before him was an elderly gentleman wearing aviator sunglasses and carrying a gallon of milk in one hand and an oxygen tank in the other. He was wearing slacks, dress shoes, and a short sleeved button up shirt and his receding, white hair and thick mustache made him look about 20 years older than he actually was. This man had been through hell and back and he was pale and sickly looking. The man looked at him with half a smirk on his face, seemingly unfazed by the scene in front of him.
“Oh no, sir, this is not what it looks like, I swear,” Elliot pleaded. “I thought this was someone else’s—I mean I’m looking for something and the person who has what I’m looking for drives this same car and…” He trailed off realizing how ridiculous he must’ve sounded.
“Well, whatever you’re looking for must be pretty damn important to be breaking into cars in the broad daylight of July, wearing all black,” the man joked. “So if you’ll kindly do me a favor and put my things back in order so I can go home, you can get back to looking for whatever it is you’re looking for somewhere else.”
Elliot couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You’re not going to call the police?” Elliot asked. “You’re just going to let me go?”
“Son, you’ve got to be one of the least intimidating looking people I’ve ever met in my life,” the man chuckled. “Whatever reason you have for breaking into my car this afternoon can’t be even half as bad as some of the things I’ve done in my 72 years on Earth.”
Elliot didn’t know what to say. Thank you? I’m sorry?So instead of saying something, he just stood there. He felt awful that he had interrupted the man’s day. Elliot watched as the old man struggled to get into the car with the oxygen tank and start the engine. When he was settled, the man rolled down the window next to where Elliot stood and tried to put Elliot’s mind at ease.
“Look, kid. I’m giving you a free pass. Go home, think about what you’re doing before you do it, and put on some damn shorts. It’s July for God’s sake.” The old man laughed a hefty chuckle that led into a short coughing fit.
Elliot couldn’t help but smile a little at the man’s kindness.
“Thank you, sir.”
The old man nodded and pulled out of the parking space. As he drove away, Elliot realized he was still holding the metal box in his hands.
Shit.
The box was army green with “PVT Holmes” written on the top and Elliot realized that the man must be a veteran. He went through the contents again, trying to figure out how he could contact the man and let him know he still had the box. He felt surprisingly calm after the events of the past 20 minutes, but he knew that returning the box to the old man was the least he could do after the inconvenience he had imposed. Plus, he figured that if the man had been carrying the box around in his car, it must be pretty important to him.
He looked through pictures of men in military uniforms and letters written to someone named Thornton from a woman named Katherine. The letters were written in 1967 and he realized the items must be from the Vietnam War. He wondered if the old man had been drafted when he was young. He wasn’t able to locate a phone number, but he noticed the return address for the letters were in Tempe, and he figured that was his best place to start.
~
On his way to the address, he formulated what he would say, how he would explain the situation. Hey uh…so I broke into a car earlier and I think you know the man whose car it was. He was starting to realize that there was really no good way to say it.
He pulled up in front of a small white house. It couldn’t have been larger than one thousand square feet, but the front yard was bordered by a white picket fence and was full of greenery and flowers. It was clear that the owner was keeping it well maintained. He turned off his car and sat outside for a moment, trying to muster the courage to walk to the front door. He noticed there was no car in the driveway, but there was a small garage. He worried that maybe no one would even be home.
He walked to the front door, which was just above the ground on a small step. He didn’t see a doorbell, so he lightly knocked on the door with a shaking hand. He was holding the metal box and he wasn’t sure if he should try to hide the fact that he had it or not. He immediately stepped back creating quite a distance between himself and the door. A middle-aged African American woman answered the door.
She was wearing scrubs and a huge smile when she said, “well hey there, hon. What can I do for you today?”
Elliot realized right away that he couldn’t be at the right place. Katherine clearly didn’t live here anymore.
“Actually, I think I’m at the wrong house. The person I’m looking for must have moved,” he said. He was both disappointed and relieved.
“Oh this isn’t my residence, hon. Are you looking for Mr. Holmes?”
MR HOLMES?
Before Elliot could say anything, the woman welcomed him inside. As soon as he stepped through the door, he saw the man sitting in a big recliner chair by the front window.
“Well, my boy, I figured you’d find me once I realized you drove off with my box,” he said. “Come on in and have a seat. I have a feeling we’ve got some things to talk about.”
Elliot moved to sit on the couch across the room. “Sir, I really am sorry about the other day. I wish I could explain the whole situation, but it’s kind of a long story and I just wanted to bring you back your box of things. It seemed important and I recently lost something important to me and I would hate to make someone else feel the way I feel,” he explained.
“Son, if I’ve learned one thing in my life, it’s that things are just that—things. What’s important are the memories attached to those things. But the memories still exist without the things,” the man said.
Elliot could feel himself relax a little. This man was treating him with so much kindness for seemingly no reason. Elliot was intrigued and Aunt Lucy would’ve wanted to know all about this man’s story. So Elliot had to ask, just in case Lucy was somewhere listening.
“Sir—“
“Enough of this ‘sir’ stuff,” the man interrupted. Just call me Thorn. That’s what my buddies called me back in the day. And my sweet wife, Katherine—I just lost her a few years ago. That’s why I’ve got Keyaira here to help take care of me, although I’d probably be fine on my own. But Katherine made me promise I wouldn’t live alone once she was gone. I don’t think you’ve told me your name yet.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your wife, Thorn. I’m Elliot.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about Thorn’s time in the Army during the Vietnam War. He had been drafted just weeks after he started dating Katherine. But she faithfully wrote letters weekly while he was gone. The second he got home, he asked her to marry him and the rest is history. They never did have children, so once Katherine was gone, it was just Thorn until Thorn hired Keyaira. But from the interactions he witnessed between the two that afternoon, he really treated Keyaira like family.
Before they knew it Keyaira was asking Elliot if he would stay for dinner. He had no idea so much time had passed. He had forgotten for a moment about everything going on: Aunt Lucy, his mother, the notebook. He declined dinner, but as he left he had a question.
“Thorn, I’m not sure why you’re being so kind to me after what happened the other day, but I’ve had a very good time talking with you today,” he said. “Do you think that it would be possible for me to come back tomorrow?”
“Well Elliot, I sure would like that,” he said with a smile. “I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow around two, but please do come by for dinner. I’ve enjoyed telling someone my stories. I think Keyaira has heard them all a hundred time already.”
~
The next day, Elliot returned for dinner. And the day after that. And every day that Thorn would have him. He heard all about the war and Katherine. He even started helping take Thorn to his appointments to give Keyaira an occasional break.
Elliot learned that Thorn had stage 4, colon cancer and had been given three to six months to live. Elliot couldn’t imagine getting close to someone and losing him again so soon after Aunt Lucy, but he quickly realized he was really all that Thorn had left other than Keyaira.
Elliot thought a lot about what Thorn had said the first day they sat down to talk. Things are just things.The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Aunt Lucy’s notebook wasn’t Aunt Lucy. Thorn had helped him see that.
That summer Thorn got really sick and they moved him to a hospice facility. When things were nearing the end, Elliot received a call from Keyaira. She told him that she could tell things were really close and that Thorn had asked her if she could get Elliot to come visit.
~
He looked helpless and pale lying in the hospice bed. He seemed to drift in and out of sleep. Elliot sat beside his bed in a small chair. He felt the tears well up in his eyes.
“Thorn, I know you didn’t know me really well and you still don’t know my whole story.” He could feel the lump building in his throat. “But I feel like I’m ready to tell you what happened that day I broke into your car. My Aunt Lucy had just died and she was my favorite person in the world. My mother never cared too much about me and she came to town to help get the funeral together and she took it upon herself to take a bunch of my aunt’s things to Goodwill. Unfortunately, she also took a notebook that my Aunt Lucy gave me when I graduated high school. It was full of science notes—she was an astrophysicist, a real badass. Anyway, I rushed to the Goodwill and they had sold it already. But the store worker remembered that the girl who bought it was driving a red Ford Mustang. So when I saw your car in the parking lot that day, I took a chance that maybe the notebook would still be in the car. And I’m really sorry, Thorn. It wasn’t right of me to do that.”
“Kid, meeting you was one of the best parts of my life,” Thorn was breathing heavily and speaking weakly. “You have shown me true friendship these past few months and I would have you break into my car all over again if it meant having you around.”
Elliot began to cry. He sat by Thorn’s side for the following three days. On the third day, at 6 o’clock in the evening, Thorn took his last breath while holding Elliot’s hand. Elliot sat in the front row at his funeral and read a letter he had written to Thorn during those last three days. The last line of the letter went like this:
Things are just things, but memories are what we should hold on to.
Short Stories
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