Little Lies and Secrets

It was an ordinary day; I went to my job at the local coffee shop and attempted to flirt with the hot guy whose name I still don’t know but comes in almost everyday and spent my breaks gossiping with Ella, my best friend and co-worker, while trying to do some work. Yes, my day had been perfectly normal until I found a pile of letters addressed to Mrs. Alice Greene in my post box. Alice was my Grandma, she died a little over two years ago and none of us were really sure how so we just put it down to age, and I'd been living in her house since she died. Well, not since she died considering there was a lot of paperwork that needed to be signed and all that before I could move in. Plus, I waited a month because I was pretty sure her ghost was haunting the house. There were noises that were happening in the middle of the night. I later realised it was just a rocking chair that'd been placed on some creaking floor boards.

I shouldn't open the letters. They were my Grandma's, her private letters that held information that was just for her eyes. Opening them would be immoral but...well; it wasn't as if my Grandma was going to open them, right? She was dead and, even if I didn't know much about what happened when you died, I'm pretty sure it means that you can't open letters. But I can open letters. We have the same second name and my first name - Jenny - has one letter the same as Alice...So, I should open the letters.

My fingers brushed against the worn envelopes before spreading them out on my kitchen table, wondering which to open first. None of them looked very official, most likely sent from friends or people she knew and not the bank or something like that. I already had a feeling that opening them was a bad idea, as if a spider was going to end up crawling out the second I opened it, and I had to make myself a hot chocolate to calm my nerves. One of the perks of living alone was the fact that I could get hot chocolate whenever I felt like it unlike at home where my mum complained it gave my nightmares. It didn’t!

I gave a small sigh as I picked up one of the envelopes, opening it up. It looked pretty informal and was sent by someone called Hunter Jones which, by all means, was a stupid name. Who would name their child Hunter? I straightened the letter out with my fingers, eyes scanning the words.

Dear Alice Maria Greene,

The last of The Powers are gone. You know what this means. You have to end this.

Good luck, Hunter Jones.

At first I thought the weirdest thing about this letter is that I didn't even know that my Grandma had a middle name. I read it over a few times, trying to find a way for the words to make sense but they don't. It's just words, nothing that means anything to mean. I'm not sure how 'The Powers' are and I wonder what it was my Grandma had to end. Her life? No, that seemed far too extreme.

I glanced at the other letters, wondering if they were just as cryptic as this one and hoping that they had at least a bit more information on them. I'd never really been interested in my Grandma or her life. She was a nice enough woman, always giving me sweets and sending me birthday cards, but she rarely visited us and we could never find the time to visit her. Besides, she was old, what was there to be interested in? But now I couldn't help but be interested in her, in her life, in what she had to end, in who this Hunter guy - or girl - was.

I pulled another envelope in front of me, opening it up and beginning to read the words. This letter was hand written, unlike the other that was type up on a computer, but still from the Hunter guy. The writing wasn't exactly neat, swirling scribbles that looked rushed, but it was at least readable. I stood to my feet, carrying my cup with me and deciding that if I was going to read this letter - and the other - I was going to need more hot chocolate.