The Inheritance and Other Stories by Robin Hobb; Megan Lindholm; Tom Kidd

Author:Robin Hobb; Megan Lindholm; Tom Kidd
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Short Stories
ISBN: 9781596064386
Publisher: Subterranean
Published: 2011-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Inheritance

My parents both lived through the Great Depression and World War II. My father met my mother when he was stationed near Norwich with the Eighth Air Force. She married him and followed him to the United States. Both of them had known affluence in their lives, and also knew how quickly wealth and easy lives could disappear.

As I grew up, they let me know that education and experiences were to be valued high above material things. These things were the riches that one could not easily be stripped of. And when they died, first my mother and then my father, there was very little in the way of physical goods for any of us to claim. Some photo albums, some books. A rocking chair, a wooden salad bowl, a chiming clock my uncle had made for them. That was my inheritance.

And on the surface, such an inheritance can seem trivial, even pathetic. Unless one recalls that an inheritance isn’t about material wealth, but about the experiences that came with it.

It was in my grandmother’s jewel box. I found it after she died. Perhaps jewel box is too fine a name to give to the plain wooden cask that held so little. There was a silver ring with the stone long prized from the setting, sold to pay family debts no doubt. I wondered why she had not sold it whole. There were two necklaces, one of garnets and another of polished jasper. In the bottom, wrapped in layer upon layer of linen, was the pendant.

It was a lovely carving of a woman’s face. She looked both aristocratic and yet merry, and I recognized in her features some of my own. I wondered which of my female ancestors she was, and why someone had taken such care to make so delicate a carving from such an ugly piece of wood. It was gray and checked with age and weighed unnaturally heavy in my hand as I examined it. The chain it was fixed to was fine silver, however. I thought it might be worn alone if the pendant could be removed. I heard a footstep in the hall outside her bedroom and hastily slipped the chain about my neck. The cameo hung heavy between my breasts, concealed by my blouse. My cousin Tetlia stood suddenly in the doorway. “What do you have there?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” I told her and hastily set the box back on grandmother’s chest.

She quickly came into the room and snatched it up. She opened it and dumped the necklaces into her hand. “Nice,” she said, holding up the jasper one. My heart sank, for I had liked it best of the three. “I’m eldest of the granddaughters,” she pointed out smugly and slipped it over her head. She weighed the garnets in her hand. “And my sister, Coreth, comes next. This for her.” Her lips twisted in a smile as she tossed me the robbed ring. “For you, Cerise. Not much of an inheritance, but

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