Let’s see how you choose to open and decode this message 🙂
Marj was in a dark dilemma.
She’d done so much crying that her eyes were nearly swollen shut.
What would she tell her parents when they returned from their overseas trip in ten days?!
He was 7 years older than she at 24, and her “first”, but he’d romanced her in a way that made her feel completely safe and valued. What a naive child she was! Now, that was all a tortuous month ago and he had since vanished.
The early pregnancy test had come back positive this morning and she now found herself rummaging in the attic for luggage to run away… or something else.
Another rush of panic made her fall to her knees praying to God for direction and it was then she spied the envelope between the rafters.
It was stiff-almost crispy- and it was sealed with wax like was done in the ‘olden days’.
When she turned it over, the three bold words on the other side made her audibly gasp.
FOR MARJORIE ONLY
The letter must have belonged to her great-grandmother whose name she had always worn proudly. Marj had heard that she had raised her grandmother all on her own after a “tragic accident” of some kind had claimed her first husband. Later on, when Grandma was 10, she’d married Grandma’s stepdad -the man she knew as Grandpa-and had twin sons.
Marj waivered a bit then opened the note:
My Dear Marjorie,
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I did love you! Never forget that. We were impulsive kids full of lust and got carried off in a few passionate moments. Now I hear you’re “in trouble”.
I know a doctor in Memphis who deals with unmarried girls who are “in the family way” and sets things right. I’ll help you pay for travel, if you wish. Do what’s right.
As Ever,
Roger
“Great-grandmother Marjorie had never opened this letter. She probably knew what it was going to ask her to do. And I’m here because she chose not to do it. I hear you, God!.”
Marj placed the letter back, a little more carefully hidden, between the floorboards. Straightened her posture and went back to her room to look online for a job, and possibly later on, research ‘baby names’.
https://reinventionsreena.wordpress.com/2023/05/25/reenas-xploration-challenge-281/
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