Short Story Scenes and Summary

The beagle with a black patch over his eye whimpered and whined from where he lay under the red velvet ottoman. She should yell at him for laying on the oriental rug or for chewing on the gold tassels that hung from the ottoman or for all this damn whimpering and whining, but she wouldn’t. Not today. She would just sit in her Victorian arm chair and look out into the dark nothingness outside her sliding glass door. She might flip mindlessly through an HGTV catalog or turn on a cooking show, but she wouldn’t really read and she wouldn’t really watch, so what was the point anyhow. Behind her, she could hear the tea kettle squeal on the ancient stove top. She was surprised to find the stove still worked at all. She listened to it make music with the clock ticking and the dog whining for five minutes before she could bring herself to get up. At twenty-five years old she should not be this way. Living alone among antiquities. Not to mention her grandfather, who owned the house. Her grandmother had died yesterday, bequeathing her everything in the will. The care of her grandfather, included. So here she was, thrown back into her grandmother’s world, her grandmother’s house, her grandmother’s rules. The old woman’s will read like she was doing her granddaughter a favor, giving this all to her. She had never given anything to her granddaughter without expecting something, everything in return. It all began when she was six years old and her grandmother had given her a book. “Take care of it, ” She said, “And you can keep it.” Neither a borrower nor a lender be. I never borrowed anything from you without you borrowing something from me.