Passing Notes (7 page)

I am part of you, my boy. Trust your heart.
Be strong. Be brave. But above all, be loving.

I truly hoped I could be those things.

“Thank you.”

No. It is I who thank you.

And then, so faint I could barely see it, a
ghostly word written by a ghost:

Goodbye.

10

As requested, I went straight home, walked
into my grandmother’s room and handed the envelope to her.

“Oh! A letter for me?” She was so delighted
her eyes sparkled like a child being given a lollipop.

I helped her open the envelope and unfold the
letter. The ghost hadn’t used yellow notebook paper. This was a
thick piece of parchment, smaller than an average sized piece of
paper. A musky smell wafted up from it, as if the paper had been
trying to hold the essence of the man who’d written on it. At the
top was my grandmother’s name, Eileen, written in cursive and
surrounded by a heart.

“You found them,” Grandma said to me, not
daring to look up from the letter. Her hands trembled more than
usual as I handed it to her. “You found my letters.”

“Uh, yes, Grandma. At least this one.”

She read it to herself, and when she was done
she held it to her heart, closed her eyes and lifted her face
toward Heaven. She shook her head ever so slowly, a blissful smile
on her lips while glad tears rolled down her cheeks. My mom came in
the room and saw her.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Grandma looked at my mom and then at me.
“Thank you. I love you both so much. Thank you for all that you’ve
done for me.”

“Mom?” Worry filled the lines around my
mother’s eyes.

Grandma lifted the letter to her lips and
kissed it, then lowered her head to the pillow, closed her eyes,
and was gone.

“Mom? Mom!”

My mother grabbed my grandma’s wrist to check
her pulse and then began sobbing. She cried out for Dad. He came
running in. A chaotic ballet happened around me, but I stayed calm.
All I did was reach for the letter. I sat at the foot of her bed
and read it.

Dear Eileen,

I never got to say goodbye to you. We never
got to have the life we planned. My life ended way too soon, and
you’ve lived so long. You had our beautiful daughter, and she has
given us a wonderful grandson. Somehow he’s been able to bring me
back for just this brief time so I can see you again. I want you to
come to me now. I have a place ready for us. I want you to sleep
and wake up in my arms. We will be together forever now. I love you
so much and always have.

All my love,

Joe

My grandfather. He was the ghost. Now I
understood it all. My grandpa had died at war, leaving my pregnant
grandma at home to survive without him. All she’d had of him were
the letters he’d written. I wasn’t sad for Grandma. I was glad she
was with him, finally. She deserved that rest.

* * * *

I wrote a letter to Bethany every week
through the end of the school year, and once I left for boot camp I
wrote three a week, never slowing down, even when I got deployed.
Every single one of them had been in my best handwriting. All of
them on some special stationery I bought just for her. And my
beautiful girlfriend wrote back even more amazing letters to me,
which got me through everything and made me strong so I could come
home to her.

THE END

Author’s Note

I began writing
Passing Notes
as a challenge. A publisher was looking for
romantic YA short stories featuring ghosts. I like writing prompts
and decided this was a fun one to try.

My daughter was going into 5th grade at the
time, and a hot issue was that cursive was not being taught in most
elementary schools anymore. While I understand that cursive isn’t
super important in daily life, it is a sad art to lose. One day,
far in the future, will no one be able to read the important
documents and even private diaries or letters of the notable people
of our history who lived before the 1990s? Will no one ever pen a
beautiful love letter? Is that something that will forever vanish
from the world?

Also, that same year, one of my
step-daughters was in a relationship, and she spent all her time
texting with her boyfriend rather than actually talking to him.
That saddened me too. What was happening to the language of love?
It didn’t surprise me when that relationship didn’t last. How could
it?

So I wrote
Passing Notes
in response
to that. It didn’t get accepted in the anthology, and I never quite
know what to do with Young Adult short stories. I played with it
some more, hoping to stretch it into a full-length novel, but a
novella is where it found its stopping point. Thank you to Caroline
Andrus and Nancy Schumacher for agreeing to publish it through Fire
and Ice. An extra thanks to Caroline for another beautiful cover
design. Thank you also to Rebecka Neyman for the editing.

I send a special acknowledgement to my dear
friend Jeni Richard who took the time to help me cut the original
short story down in size to fit the word count required by the
anthology. She really helped me chop out what wasn’t necessary.
Although, I think she and I both knew the story needed to be
longer, not shorter.

And please, my dear readers, if you enjoyed
this story remember to take a moment to share a comment about it or
give it some stars on Amazon or Goodreads or any online bookstore.
It really helps let others know this is a book worth reading, and
it certainly helps me know that you want me to keep writing. I
appreciate all of you more than you can imagine.

About the
Author

Passing Notes
is D. G. Driver’s second
book published by Fire and Ice. Her fantasy novel
Cry of the
Sea
was released in 2014. She has published several
award-winning, critically acclaimed non-fiction books as Donna
Getzinger. She is an active member of the Society of Children’s
Book Writers and Illustrators and lives with her family in
Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her web site to learn more about her,
and follow her to keep up with future projects.

Website:
www.dgdriver.com

Facebook:
facebook.com/donnagdriver

Tumblr:
d-g-driver.tumblr.com

Twitter:
@DGDriverAuthor

Instagram:
instagram.com/d_g_driver

Pinterest:
pinterest.com/dgdriver

Wattpad:
wattpad.com/user/DGDriver

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