Gwendy's Button Box

32

Gwendy sits. She eats her coffee cake in small slow bites, washing each one down with a tiny sip of milk. She hears the squeak her trunk lid makes when it goes up. She hears the squeak when the lid is lowered again. She hears the snap-snap of the latches being considerately closed. She hears his footsteps approach the door to the hall, and pause there. Will he say goodbye?

He does not. The door opens and softly closes. Mr. Richard Farris, first encountered on a bench at the top of Castle View’s Suicide Stairs, has left her life. Gwendy sits for another minute, finishing the last bite of her cake and thinking of a book she wants to write, a sprawling saga about a small town in Maine, one very much like her own. There will be love and horror. She isn’t ready yet, but she thinks the time will come quite soon; two years, five at most. Then she will sit down at her typewriter—her button box—and start tapping away.

At last, she gets up and walks into the living room. There’s a spring in her step. Already she feels lighter. The small black hat is no longer on her desk, but he’s left her something, anyway: an 1891 Morgan silver dollar. She picks it up, turning it this way and that so its uncirculated surface can catch the light. Then she laughs and puts it in her pocket.