12+  Dad probably hoped to take his secrets to the grave, but a heart attack scuppered his plans.

"Will you come back for the funeral, Aaron?" my sister, Becky, asked when she called with the news.

"Yes, of course," I replied.

"And can you stay a few days to help Mum and me tidy up Dad's stuff?"

"Okay," I agreed, suppressing a groan. I left my hometown over twenty years ago and rarely return, even for significant family events like birthdays, weddings and funerals.

In the black-clad graveside tableau at Dad's funeral, I'm standing at the front beside Mum and Becky. I would have preferred a less conspicuous position, behind the mourners, like the young twenty-something woman I'd noticed in the back pew at the church service. 

We'd exchanged glances when I walked past carrying Dad's coffin with my uncles and nephews. She looked familiar, her long red hair framing a pale face set with green eyes. But I couldn't place her among family and friends. When I asked, Becky didn't know the young redhead either, and I didn't see her at the cemetery or the wake. 

I wondered if she was a student at the university where Dad had been an English Professor. And I hoped he hadn't been up to his old tricks. 

Two days after the funeral, we started sorting Dad's things. Becky and Mum tackled the bedroom wardrobes, and I was assigned his study. 

I sat at Dad's desk and thumbed through his papers and latest manuscript, A Discourse on Poetry, Symbolism and Purple Prose in Victorian Erotica. Post-it notes and Dad's red pen annotations littered the pages, but I doubted anyone would publish it now. 

Next, I checked his drawers. The bottom drawer was locked, and I couldn't find a key. I should have asked Mum, but I jemmied the drawer with a letter opener instead. Inside were bundles of letters tied with string. The handwriting on the envelopes of each bundle was different, and I didn't recognise any of them.

A memory surfaced. I was living at home, studying engineering at Dad's university. It was a Friday night, and I'd gone to the uni bar to meet friends. 

"Aaron!" It was Dad. He was at the bar with a young woman about my age. She had flaming red hair, a pale face, and emerald green eyes. 

"Trudy, this is my son," Dad introduced us. "Aaron is doing engineering. He doesn't share our passion for English," Dad told Trudy, laughing and patting her blue-jeaned butt. She smiled without flinching.

After that night, I hated Dad. I left home, quit uni, and moved across the country.

Was one of the bundles of letters from Trudy? And who was the young redhead at the church? Another of Dad's conquests? Or my half-sister? Could these letters reveal his secrets?

I closed the drawer, took the letters outside, and burned them, not for Dad but for Mum and Becky, Trudy and the other young women whose passions he had stolen.

© 2024 Robert Fairhead

Thanks to Michael Bußmann for sharing the funeral cortege image on Pixabay.

I wrote Stolen Passions for July 2024's Not Quite Write Prize run by the Not Quite Write Podcast. Their brief was:

• Your story must feature the word TABLE. This word must be used in full, with no spaces or interrupting punctuation. However it may be included within a longer word provided the original spelling is retained, e.g. tabletop or constable.
• It must feature the action of "stealing something". You don’t need to use this exact wording and you can feature the action prominently or simply as an aside. The action may occur before the beginning of your story or after it ends as long as it’s clearly referenced somewhere within your story.
• And it must break the rule "avoid purple prose". You can interpret this anti-prompt in whatever creative way you see fit. Whatever your approach, your goal should remain to tell the best story possible.

The Not Quite Write Podcast emailed the brief on Friday midday (Australian EST), and writers had 60 hours to write and submit their stories before the Sunday midnight deadline. I had lunch with a friend on Friday, and he suggested TABLEAU for the TABLE brief. Tick one from the brief! 

All I had to do was write a 500-word "purple prose" story where someone stole something. I knew stealing something wouldn't be hard to slot into my story, but "purple prose"!?

The Not Quite Write Prize is famous (some may say, infamous!) for its anti-prompts, which have included:

• July 2023: Your story must break the rule to avoid all adverbs
• January 2024: Avoid clichés
• April 2024: Always use said. 

Yes, I may have used purplish prose in my early writing, but I like to think I've matured as a writer and learned to "kill my flowery darlings". Writing purple prose felt like being asked to write using my non-dominant left hand!

But as I wrote my story about an estranged son returning home for his father's funeral, it occurred to me that A Discourse on Poetry, Symbolism and Purple Prose in Victorian Erotica would be the sort of book an English Professor might write. And the reason for the estrangement, his father's philandering with university students, is revealed when the son finds the hidden bundles of letters in his father's desk from "the young women whose passions he had stolen". Ticks two and three from the brief!

My story wasn't short or long-listed for the Not Quite Write Prize, but I enjoyed the weekend writing and signed up again for the October 2024 challenge. Will it be fifth time lucky? I'll let you know!

N.B. You might like to read my first Not Quite Write Prize story from July 2023, In Her Head.