Fine Print

The phone rang a little after three in the morning. Charlie grabbed it before the sound woke his...oh. Never mind. Inching away from the empty space on the bed, Charlie pressed his thumb to the screen. "Hello?"

"Did Grandma hate me?"

Yawning, Charlie swung his legs off the edge of the bed. "She hated everybody, Chris. What are you really asking?"

Cold footsteps across the floor, a chill draft picking up goosebumps on Charlie's legs. There was a long-distance sigh in his ear. "I mean, did she say anything? Did she have some specific thing she was mad at me for?"

"Is this really a call-before-dawn emergency?" Charlie pushed up the toilet seat and switched the phone to his other ear. "Grandma was a sour old witch who didn't like anybody. Good news; you never have to worry about it ever again."

"See, that's what I thought," said the voice on the phone. "I thought that mothball-scented pit bull dropped her passive-aggressive grip on our lives, until I got that package in the mail. The package you sent me. Where are you right now?"

Charlie flushed. "Chris, all I did was follow instructions. I got all that financial shit out of the way first, then I went back for the objective bequeathals. You got what she wanted you to have."

"You're sure?"

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Charlie was eye to eye with the dwindling contents of his late grandmother's liquor cabinet. The old broad liked a stiff vodka soda, and Charlie was determined to investigate why. "What's your problem, Chris? Remind me: what'd I send you?"

"You don't remember?" Chris sounded aghast. "Did you even look at it?"

"Look at what?"

"The book!"

Charlie put down his glass to check the phone screen. How long was it going to take before his cousin got to the point? "Chris, I've packed and shipped a couple dozen books in a half a dozen days, and I'm in the process of boxing up the donated collections. I don't have a librarian's memory."

"Birds of America." Chris's voice was reverent, almost awed. "Four elephant folios of hand-colored prints."

"So, four books."

"Four volumes. One book."

"Oh! The big fucker."

"Yes, Charlie, the big fucker."

Charlie swirled the ice in his glass as the wind rattled the windows. "Well, I don't know what to tell you, Chris, after all, you do like books. Some color-blind uncle got the abstract paintings, and my vegan sister got a zoo's worth of taxidermy. Matter fact, there's some other books I could ship you; save me the headache of getting them catalogued."

"Why would I--wait," Chris breathed. "What other books?"

"Jesus, Chris, she had a whole room full." Shrugging into a robe, Charlie made his way across the frosty floor. "Some of them look pretty old, you know, classics and things."

"Do you mean classics as in every public school has them," Chris tested the vocal edge of his patience. "Or classics as in belong in a museum classics? First edition classics?"

"I'm not a professor, Chris." Charlie shoved the stiff bolt through a reading lamp's neck, and introduced his vodka to the half-packed, haphazard stacks. "We got your Shakespeare, your Andrew Lang, your Moby--"

"Where are you right now?"

"Dick. I could text you titles or--"

"Are you at the house?"

Charlie chose to take a long, high-proof sip. "Maybe."

"Charlie!"

"Don't 'Charlie' me."

"It is not your house!"

The wind smacked a tree branch against the antique bay windows. There were six coasters on the mahogany sideboard, and Charlie did not use a single one of them. "I am just organizing things. Like she told me."

"At three in the morning?"

"I don't have--!" Charlie breathed. "I am just here temporarily while everything is getting settled. I know it's not my house."

"Right," said Chris. "Because according to the family sour-grapes-vine: you got nothing."

"I got nothing," Charlie sighed. He scraped a fingernail against the wallpaper. "Eloise got something."

"What? That's weird, why would she--"

"Two hundred grand. If," Charlie plunked down into a leather armchair. "If she left me. She kicked me out."

A brief silence on the line. "Wow."

"Yep."

"So you're--"

"Between addresses at the moment, yes."

"I was gonna say 'screwed'," Chris clarified. "Well, good riddance. I mean, sounds like she was a total gold digger."

"She was my gold digger," Charlie grumbled. "Guess she expected all the geriatric care to pay off. And for her, I guess it did. It's not that Grandma didn't leave me anything, it's that she actively left me, absolutely and specifically, with nothing."

"Well, why didn't you say something?"

"Because every time I've seen anyone since the funeral, I'm giving them bad news. Can't exactly get the sympathy vote when I'm handing out monkey's paws." The phone was quiet. "Figuratively." Charlie propped his feet up on a box full of dusty tomes. "So what's up with your fucking book, man?"

"Oh," Chris mumbled. "There's money in it."

The screen was hot against Charlie's ear. "There's what?"

"Yeah, she cut out squares in the pages and put money in." Chris didn't seem thrilled about it. "Like an Ian Fleming spy. I think, like, fifty grand. I called to see if it was her being mean or you trying to be nice."

"I can't afford to be that nice." And that glass was looking awful empty. "Maybe she loved you after all."

"She absolutely did not," Chris said darkly. "She completely ruined the book."

Charlie chuckled. "So? You really love books that much? I bet you can afford another copy."

"Well," Chris seethed. "Only a hundred or so copies of this book exist. This book--an intact copy, that is--would be, with inflation, worth about fifteen million."

Gently, Charlie lifted his feet off the packaged books. "Wow."

"And she definitely knew I would know that," Chris snarled. "So the old bat either kept her collection secret for years and years, knowing what it would mean to me and never deigning to mention it, or she bought the book at auction--again, for millions--specifically to hurt me."

"That sounds like her." Charlie ran his finger around the rim of cut glass. "Is it weird that I miss her? I know she was kind of, well, evil, but in really fun, creative ways."

"I thought it was a particularly inventive torture. Until I heard what happened to you," said the voice on the phone. "Her favorite."

"Her favorite," Charlie sighed. "Lucky me. I'm not going back to sleep, am I?"

"Have you tried alcohol?"

"Yes, but I'm willing to try again." Charlie took the phone away to find the 'end' button, but he heard a sound from the speaker. "What'd you say?"

"Do you want me to come over?" Chris asked. "I could be there tomorrow night. Or, tonight, rather. If you want."

Listening to the wind whispering through the cracks as the cold boards creaked beneath him, the dozens of half-packed boxes nagging him from every room, Charlie sized up a dusty bottle of vodka while he thought it over. "Yeah. Actually, thanks. I could really use a friend right now."

"Oh, I was just going to, um, water her grave, so to speak," Chris confessed. "Maybe glance at those classics. But yeah, you know what, it'll be good to see you." Distance did not dampen his optimistic little laugh. "Maybe the old baggage wanted to turn herself into the common enemy, poison us against material wealth, and give us all a chance to finally forge meaningful connections with each other."

Charlie thought about it. "...No."

"Felt dumb when I said it. Okay, see you soon." The phone went dead. Charlie shivered in the quiet, in the dark, in someone else's house.

All through the emptying chambers, beneath cold and vaulted ceilings, every surface was scattered with packages. All wrapped in brown paper that crinkled in sinister whispers. Addressed to distant victims still capable of a good night's sleep.