Thursday April 23rd, 2009

The exercise:

Today's prompt, inspired by a book I'm currently reading, is: the inheritance.

Mine:

The signature at the bottom of the will was almost unrecognizable; if I hadn't been there when Terry had attached his name to his final desires five days ago I would never have believed it was his name.

He hated it when I called him Terry; he tried again and again to get me to call him Dad but there was no chance of that happening. Dad's don't abandon their little girl on her third birthday. Dad's don't come stumbling back into their daughter's life thirty years later with a mumbled apology. No, that sounds more like a Terry sort of thing to do.

Though it bore only five lines, I read that piece of paper at least ten times before putting it back on the table. He had left everything to me - his mid-life crisis car; the antique pipe; the hundred-strong album collection; and the brand new handgun. And of course, typical Terry, he left a mess for me to clean up.

I picked up the phone to call the ambulance, no tears staining my face, and turned my back on his body slumped in the kitchen chair. On the will on the table. On my inherited handgun and the mess he had left behind.

But I would never escape the mess he left inside my head.