My grandmother stole things. Inside her one-car garage, peeling yellow paint flecked across a trove of objects stacked in forgotten piles: leather-covered bank ledgers; a black-handled umbrella in a posh tan check; a plastic palm tree sitting amongst gray pebbles in a brass-banded, wooden pot. Gran signed checks with a Cross pen that had belonged to her bank customer, kept my mother’s photo in a sterling silver picture frame left at the church, and squirrelled a stack of silver dollars in her unmentionables drawer. She said they were found. Not stolen but located. Repurposed. Hers for the getting.
2024 Winning Submission for Penned: Opening of Novel