For the first time since her grandfather’s death, Augusta Carter was alone with her thoughts. Seated on the porch of her grandparents’ farmhouse, she watched the late summer sun resting on the shrubs, the lawn, the dark green woods around her. The air was heavy and still. Even the woods are in mourning, she thought bitterly. Her hazel eyes—light brown and flecked with gold, just like her hair—were suddenly wet. The grief she had kept to herself for the past week rolled down her cheek in liquid form and splattered onto the old book open in her lap.
Carefully blotting the pages dry, Augusta closed the large leather book and hugged it to her chest, sighing heavily with memories of her grandfather. This was where she had sat with him so many times on the porch steps, looking down the dirt driveway toward the privet hedges that lined the road.
The memories crashed and rolled through her mind like waves, not one at a time but all at once—not individual moments with her grandfather, but a single overwhelming moment that contained all the rest within it. She closed her eyes and felt her grandfather’s warm gaze as they talked about her day, about the latest sculpture she had created, about the studio she was always just about to open. She had felt comfortable talking about almost anything with him, as he nodded encouragingly and listened.
Grandfather often carved as they sat together—a walking stick, or a small figure for the neighbor’s children—and whatever was in his hands became a work of art. It was one of the qualities she had always admired in him. He could start with a plain, unassuming block of wood and coax out a beauty that no one else had been able to see. To Augusta, this was a skill possessed by all true artists: the ability to transform plainness into beauty, to take everyday objects and draw out their inner dignity. It’s what inspired her in her own work as a sculptor. Starting with straight lines or rough lumps or hard edges and giving them a voice to sing out a new meaning.
Her grandfather was proud of her decision to become an artist, even if he had warned her that it wasn’t always an easy life. Not because artists were often poor—that was never his concern—but because putting so much of yourself into your work can wear you out. Sometimes it’s easier to keep your distance, he told her, and not get too attached to what you’re working on.
“No way, Grandfather,” she remembered teasing him, “I don’t believe you. Not after the way I’ve seen you work all these years.” He had laughed and held up his hands, guilty, but he looked delighted to have been caught out.
It was undeniably true. For as long as anyone could remember, he had risen every day at sunrise and, after a cup of black coffee, set off to work. No one who had seen his carpentry could doubt he put his heart and soul into it. Beautiful heart pine tables, solid and sturdy; cane back chairs, with seats upholstered by her grandmother; exquisitely carved dressers, cabinets, chests, each with his stamp on the back. He was proud of each piece. His life’s work, thought Augusta, her lip trembling again. She would miss him terribly.
She looked down again at the book on her lap. She couldn’t fit it into the picture of her grandfather in her mind. She had never seen it before, nor had she heard her grandfather mention it. And yet he had left it to her in his will, and her grandmother had known just where to find it in the back room, up high on a shelf with a few other leather-bound volumes. It was an odd book. It must surely be very old—the pages felt like they might dissolve in your hands—and it was printed in a strange script Augusta had never seen before. Was it Arabic? Cherokee? Russian? She had no idea what her carpenter grandfather could be doing with such a book. It was a complete mystery.
Her grandmother had not been much help, either. As she handed the book down from the upper shelf and climbed carefully off the stool, she told Augusta, “Nicolas always said he wanted you to have it. You’re his only grandchild, and he’s always been so proud of you. I’m not really sure what it is—something he had long before he met me. I always felt that book meant a lot to him, but he would never tell me what it says. Something from his student days. You know he was quite the scholar when he was young.”
Yes, Augusta knew. Her grandmother seemed to mention it more and more often these days, even though her grandfather had rarely spoken of it himself. In his youth he had studied philology and ancient languages, and during the Cold War he’d been recruited as a code breaker. Apparently he didn’t like the work, though, because he never wanted to talk about it. Whenever Augusta asked about this period in his life, he had always said, “It wasn’t as interesting as you might think.” After a short stint in international espionage he had left the CIA and trained as a carpenter, then married her grandmother and settled down to a quiet life with his family and his carpentry. But that didn’t explain why he kept this book, or what it was about, or why he specifically left it to Augusta in his will.
Wiping her eyes on the back of her hand, Augusta stood up and stretched, gazing at the hills extending out in every direction. It had been a rough time for them all, dealing with her grandfather’s illness and death. Even though it wasn’t entirely unexpected, there was never enough time to prepare, to say everything that needed to be said, to feel everything that needed to be felt.
She opened the front door and walked quietly through the coolness of the front room. Her grandmother was in the kitchen rolling out dough for the biscuits, with flour up to her elbows and sweat beading on her forehead. “Grandmother, don’t you want some help?” she offered gently. “I can help you with all this.”
Her grandmother shook her head and kept her eyes and her hands firmly on the dough. “This is what I’ve always done,” she said simply. She paused and gave Augusta a melancholy smile. “I’m just glad you’re here to help me eat it.” Augusta smiled back and placed a reassuring hand on her grandmother’s arm.
Just then, the phone on the kitchen wall started ringing.
“I’ll get it,” Augusta said, glad for something to do. Her grandparents were the only people she knew who still had a landline, a phone that actually plugged into the wall. She felt a twinge of nostalgia every time she picked it up—nostalgia for a time she didn’t even know, for a time before she was even born. Maybe it was the artist in her, but the solidity of that phone, the physicality of its inner workings, were somehow comforting in a world that churned and frothed around invisible digits floating through the air. That phone—like her grandparents’ lives—was so sturdy and straightforward. Simple, dependable, unchanging. Augusta wondered what that sort of life had been like.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” said a man’s voice, with a foreign accent Augusta couldn’t identify. “Am I speaking with Mrs. Augusta Carter?”
“Miss Augusta Carter,” Augusta corrected him. She smiled at her grandmother across the kitchen, twisting the phone cord around her fingers. “But if you’re looking for my grandmother, Mrs. Augusta Carter, she can’t come to the phone at the moment.”
“Ah,” the voice said, “I believe I am looking for Mrs. Augusta Carter, the owner of the lost discourses.”
“The lost discourses?” Augusta repeated slowly, wrinkling her nose at the strange words. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“The lost discourses,” the voice said again. “Of Epictetus. The old Ottoman book. Surely you know of it?”
Augusta’s mind was racing. “The Ottoman book,” she said quietly, half to herself and half to her grandmother, who had stopped pummeling the dough and was staring, puzzled, at Augusta.
“Yes, exactly!” the man on the phone continued excitedly. “You know the one? Do you have it? I would like to make you a very generous offer for it. I have a buyer who is very interested in acquiring this rare and valuable manuscript. Is your grandmother available to speak with me?”
Augusta paused. Thoughts skipped through her mind as she tried to make sense of this outlandish information. Was this a prank? Perhaps someone had found out about the book in her grandfather’s will and was just teasing her. But she quickly dismissed this possibility. No one else, besides her mother and grandmother, knew the contents of the will. The caller must have known about the old book in some other way.
She decided to take the stranger at his word. “I am the owner of the discourses,” she told the voice on the other end of the line. “My grandfather left it to me in his will. What do you want with it?”
“Thank God I’ve found it,” the man sighed, sounding relieved. “I was beginning to think I would never hold the lost discourses in my hands.” He was speaking so excitedly, it was difficult to catch all the words.
“Listen, Miss Carter, in the mail you will receive a plane ticket to Istanbul. I mailed it to you two days ago—that is, I mailed it to your grandmother two days ago, but as you have the same name, you will be able to use it. Please, when you receive the ticket, bring the book to Istanbul. The museum I work for will pay you well for the lost discourses of Epictetus. Do you accept my invitation?” He paused expectantly, waiting for her answer.
She didn’t know what to say. The absurdity of the caller’s proposal wasn’t lost on her—a missing Ottoman manuscript? A plane ticket to meet a mysterious man from an unnamed museum? Generous compensation for a book she had only owned for two days? It was obviously crazy. But she couldn’t bring herself to completely rule it out, either. Neither she nor her grandmother knew anything about the book, so she had nothing with which to contradict the man’s claims. Her grandfather’s book was certainly old and unlike anything she had ever seen before. What if it was, as he said, a rare and valuable manuscript? Well, why not?
Her grandmother was still looking at her, waiting for her to speak again to the caller. Augusta put her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece—the way they did in old movies—and told her grandmother, “I’ll tell you everything in a minute.” Then speaking back into the phone, she asked the caller, “How did you find us?” Her only thought was to keep him talking and learn as much as she could before committing herself to anything. She needed more time to think.
“It wasn’t easy!” The man laughed, and his voice relaxed. He had a nice laugh, Augusta thought. “Your grandfather was very hard to find. I only found him after he passed away. I found his—what is the word in English? Obituary.” At the word, Augusta felt her breath draw sharply in. Her grandfather always said he never wanted an obituary in the paper or a big funeral. He was a private man and hated people to fuss over him. But, as her grandmother pointed out, those rituals are for the survivors, and they had wanted to honor him as much as they could. Her mother and grandmother had arranged everything, including a lovely tribute in the local newspaper. It was understated and full of honest affection. Augusta thought her grandfather wouldn’t have minded.
“But the obituary didn’t say anything about the lost discourses of Epictetus,” she pointed out.
“No, it was his name. Nicolas Carter,” the voice said. “It’s a unique spelling in English, is it not? N-I-C-O-L-A-S. The H is missing. I guessed it must be a family name, passed down through the generations, like the book. He was, perhaps, named for Elizabeth Carter’s father.”
Something in her mind suddenly snapped. What right did this man have to know so much about her family? To call her up and tell her about her grandfather’s name? Why should he know things about her grandfather that she didn’t know herself? She realized she didn’t care about his offer at all, whether it was real or not. The book belonged only to her grandfather and her.
“I’m afraid I have to decline your offer,” she said to the man coldly. “I’m not interested in selling the book.”
“Please, Miss Carter! Please reconsider. I believe you may be in danger—” Augusta slammed down the phone, her face taut with anger. “It was just a prank,” she said, walking over to give her grandmother a hug. “Some local kids must have heard Grandfather left me an old book, and they were just having some fun.”
“Oh, Gus, it’s alright,” her grandmother said, wiping her hands on her apron and wrapping her arms around Augusta. “Don’t worry about it.”
Tears streamed down both their faces, as they stood quietly sobbing by the kitchen table, folded together in memories.
Ooooooo intrigue, past life of mystery of a loved one!!!! Im hooked
What an outstanding start for this story. It's so saturated with mystery!!