“Is that the deed?” David asked, leaning forward so fast his chair scraped the floor.
“No,” Mr. Henderson said. “This is for Clara.”
My fingers were cold as I lifted the flap of the envelope. Inside lay a single, stiff piece of blue plastic. It was a fifty-dollar gift card to Vance Department Store.
“Is this all she left for the years of grocery trips we made?” I asked?
David stood up, his chair tumbling backward against the bookcase.
“Where is the rest of it?” he said.
The lawyer closed the thin folder with a quiet snap.
“There is no rest of it, David,” he said.
The kitchen was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. I sat at the table with the blue plastic card under the overhead light, its silver barcode shiny and untouched.
My grandmother had always given handmade gifts, knitted mittens or jars of preserved pears, never something bought from a rack.
I picked up the card, turning it over to find any mark, any message she might have left me.
Nothing was written on the back.
I twisted the silver ring on my pinky finger, looking at the plastic edge.
Why would she leave me fifty dollars at a store she hadn’t visited in years?
The phone on the counter began to ring, the screen lighting up with David’s name.
I did not answer it. Instead, I let the call go to voicemail and spent the rest of the night turning the blue plastic card over in my fingers.
By eight the next morning, the gray winter light finally showed what the kitchen bulb had missed. Near the bottom edge of the white barcode, someone had scratched a tiny set of digits with the tip of a ballpoint pen.
