Day 808: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: desk calendar

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“7:00pm. Grandson, and pie.”

Mrs. Slocum-Lofton had dutifully made the note on her desk calendar in the home she shared with her best friend Mildred York after both had been burned out of their homes in the Blue Ridge and Skyview neighborhoods during the Ridgeline Fire.

Mrs. York never bothered to look at her friend's desk – the house had two floors, and the two women lived very different kinds of lives on them. Mrs. York also did not like stairs. That, alone, assured Mrs. Slocum-Lofton the quiet life of the intellect that she enjoyed.

The other thing the Ridgeline Fire had done was to break the bond between Mrs. Slocum-Lofton and the nephews and nieces that had lived all clustered around her since all the elder Slocum-Loftons beside her had died off. Mrs. Slocum-Lofton had not known how weary she was of her plus-50 and plus-60 relatives until they had been forced to scatter to the four winds. She already owned the house on Jonathan Lofton Avenue in Big Loft, VA, but there was no property for sale for everyone to move in around her.

All that was left after that was to not take all the calls, and to refrain from giving out the exact address. She had thus neatly cut the cord, and only interacted with them when she wanted to – which was not often.

“It is amazing how clearing the riff-raff from your life makes room for more quality to enter – or re-enter,” she often said to younger people she respected.

So, there it was – her desk calendar had the evidence. That grandson she despised from his birth to age 18 had certainly impressed her that he was not to be disregarded when her mockery of his wife and son brought him to her door ready to throw it all away if only he could burn her and everyone around her out. From age 18 to age 44, he had calmed down and taken that energy and impressed the United States of America and all of its enemies who survived their encounters with him. Then he had come home, and had taken that same energy and started re-making Big Loft's law enforcement and its perception of itself (she totally discounted the power of the Lofton County Free Voice and the increasingly unified and powerful Black population in Lofton County).

Colonel Henry Fitzhugh Lee was now 45, ranking as police captain in his return to civilian life, and one of the most powerful men in Big Loft and across Lofton County. He was the kind of man – now that he no longer wanted to kill her, that is – who was definitely worth Selene Slocum-Lofton's time … just as his grandfather had been.

Charles came in.

“Captain Lee is here, ma'am.”

“I'll be right down.”

Photo by Manasvita S on Unsplash