Scraps of Paper by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

another pencil, she went to the mahogany chifforobe up in her bedroom, which was one of the vintage pieces of furniture Edna had left behind. Massive with so many drawers and hidey-holes, a whole open top section once used for hanging clothes, it was perfect for her art tablets, canvases and supplies. Rummaging around in the top drawer, a pencil slipped from her fingers and fell behind the drawers towards the bottom. She had to get down on her knees and dig for it. Pulling out the bottom drawer, she stuck her hand into the abyss and came out with a sheaf of yellowed web-encrusted papers bound by a dirty rubber band. They were legal papers of some sort. She fished out the pencil and took the papers to the kitchen table.
    Leafing through the document, she was puzzled. It was a 1969 house title…to her house…in Emily Summers name, not Edna ’s. So the house had belonged to Emily? According to some of the other papers in the bundle, the parents had willed the house to Emily when they’d passed away, apparently within a couple weeks of each other…sometime in 1969. Now that was strange. Martha had specifically said that Edna, being the oldest daughter, had owned the house.
    On the back of the title there were some words written, so faint Abigail had to tilt them in the light to read them. The house is mine, I told you so Emily, and it will always be mine. You got what you deserved and so did I. Had Edna written them? If so, she’d had the queerest handwriting, the E in Emily was pointy and the edges like antlers; her y’s had shelves on the bottom and her c’s were almost script, they were so fancy.
    Her house was a house of secrets, Abigail pondered, putting the papers away in a safe place. She hadn’t stopped hunting for more messages from the kids and every time she moved something in the house, she looked. What kind of woman had Edna been? She must have loved this house as much as Abigail was beginning to. Abigail was becoming as obsessed with Edna as she was with Emily and the children. These people had lived here once, paced these floors and gazed out these windows, cried, laughed and dreamed in this same space. Now it was like all of them were ghosts living with her, trying to tell her something. But what?
    It was later that night outside in the storm that Abigail again heard the phantom meows. She opened the door and her eyes searched the yard through the flashing lights and rain. Nothing was there. She checked the front porch. Nothing. She returned to her sketching.
    So she jumped when the knocking came at the front door. She put her artwork away, it was too soon for anyone to see it, and answered the door.
    “Frank! What are you doing out in this storm?” was what came out of her mouth, though she was happy to see a real human face hovering in front of her and not some ghost.
    “Visiting you. Should have called first, but the storm messed up the phones. Is it a bad time?”
    “No, other than there’s a hurricane out there. I was ready for a break. Been working on Martha’s watercolor of her mansion, er, house.”
    Standing in the doorway, rain was dripping down Frank’s face, his hair was soaked, and in his hands was a tiny bit of white fur that moved. He held it out to her and she took it. “What’s this?” she asked when the ball of fur peered up at her with huge frightened eyes. It meowed and attempted to hide in her hands.
    “A kitten I found on your porch. It came right to me. I thought it was yours so I caught it. I think it’s hungry.”
    “No doubt.” Abigail could feel its tiny heart beating. Wet and dirty, the creature was quivering. “But it isn’t mine. I don’t have a cat.” Not anymore, she thought. Joel and she had had a cat, Shadow, who’d disappeared after Joel had. She’d loved that cat and had hunted everywhere for it. Losing Shadow, too, had made the pain of losing her husband even worse. But Shadow had been fifteen years old and Abigail had concluded that, pining for