Dear Agatha Christie Collection at My Grandparents’ House,
It’s been so long! I miss you guys!
I always remember the time we spent together on summer trips. After all the hellos, then it was time to settle into our room in the top back corner of the house. The room that smelled of clean sheets and very very faintly of fresh tobacco – contributions from each of our grandparents. The wire drawers in the closet, empty and waiting for our suitcases’ contents. The nifty couch and side table combination from our mother’s first apartment – the one that had been transformed into two twin beds for my sister and me and laid with fluffy duvets. And you, you marvelous things, you beat up, waterlogged companions, you had to be gathered up from the various rooms of the house where you were used to hold windows open or abandoned on shelves in bedrooms and guest rooms.
With you I laid the foundation of my mystery addiction, page by page. Because summer after summer I reread you and fall after fall I forgot who the murderer was and slowly I realized I didn’t care who did the killing, not really, as long as Marple and Poirot and Tommy and Tuppence and the rest of them would continue to show up in your pages and set the small, legoland world you described back on its feet in their funny, endearing little ways. Human nature, you know. That’s all it is.
You were always there. Thank you.
-e.