Prompt 46-Trinket

Describe one odd item that you have in your purse or wallet right now.

Credit cards, rewards cards, cash, and receipts littered the kitchen table as Richard emptied out his old battered wallet. Even the duct tape was finally surrendering after the most recent trip through the wash. He organized the piles. It was as good a time as any to get rid of anything that he didn’t use on a regular basis.

The receipts could be tossed. He kept track of all his purchases with his phone so there was almost never a need to keep the paper record of the transaction. Every store he shopped at had a rewards card and he had several for places he had only been once, or only shopped at two or three times a year. Those could be set aside.

He frowned at the pile of credit cards. He didn’t really need so many. He had a couple finance cards that weren’t good for anything but the store they came from. Those could be stored with the extraneous rewards cards he never used. And, he thought, he should probably lock up or shred his highest balance card. At least until he paid it down.

The last pile had his license, his handgun permit, and a couple of photos. One was a picture of his family, mother, father, younger brother. He liked to keep them close to hand. The other featured a woman with sun-darkened skin and thick, brown curls who smiled up at him from a beach somewhere exotic.

Richard fingered the bent edges of the photo and a dark expression formed on his face. He shouldn’t hold on to it; it wasn’t his. How long had it been? Surely she would have moved on by now. Wade didn’t die for her to waste her life pining after him. But Richard had promised. He promised Wade to find her and give her the photo back.

He set the photo on the table and rested his head in his hands. Where would he even begin? What would he say to her if and when he found her? “I know it’s been five years since he died, but you used to write to my partner and he had this picture of you. He asked me to get it back to you so here you go.”

He sighed and shook his head. That wasn’t going to work at all. His lips curled up in a sneer. Well, he had time to work on that. None of it would matter if he couldn’t track her down first. He frowned and looked back at the dark smiling eyes in the photo. If only he had more than a name to go on. “Don’t worry Wade, I’ll find your Riley King. If it takes the rest of my life, I’ll find her for you.”

Notes: Not much to go on with this prompt. Still, I had fun trying to figure out what sort of odd things a man might keep in his wallet. A woman’s purse is a black hole, any number of things could be floating around down there, but aside from cash and cards I’ve never seen anything particularly “odd” in a man’s wallet. I once drew my husband a picture while he was off studying and he kept it in his wallet for years. I was going to go a similar route with this little tale but it got stuck on the picture. The story demanded the picture be the odd thing so here were are.

The strangest thing in my purse is a little wooden cross on a piece of yarn that was given to me by a customer when I worked fast food and was in the drive thru on that particular day. I’m not overly religious by any standards, but I’ve kept it in my purse ever since. Do you have anything weird in your purse or wallet? Why? What is it for?

Tuesday’s prompt: Write a quick love story. The story must end badly.

Wow, spoiler alert right in the prompt. Most of my love stories end badly, haha. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings. Until then!