My Wealthy Grandmother Left Me a Single Brass Key and No Inheritance
I carefully unfolded the white layers to reveal a dark wooden frame containing a black-and-white photograph of Margaret from her late thirties.
She was standing in front of the very first Oakhaven store, her chin tilted up, her hands clasped firmly over the handle of her umbrella.
Her expression was unyielding, yet as I looked closer at the print, I could see the faint lines around her eyes that suggested she had been squinting against the bright Ohio afternoon sun.
I stood up and carried the frame to the wall behind the desk, where a sturdy brass nail was already set into the plaster.
I hung the picture, adjusting it slightly until the frame hung perfectly level against the cream paint.
When I sat back down, her painted eyes seemed to look directly over my shoulder, watching the door as if she were still waiting for a late shipment of winter squash.
I opened the black binder and began to read the first page of the delivery logs, my finger tracing the columns of numbers that represented the daily life of fourteen different communities.
