Kay eased open the locket. She managed to open it halfway when she stopped.

"It seems stuck...Like it's maybe rusted or tarnished. I'm afraid I might break it if try any more," Kay sighed.

"But look, there looks like there's a piece of paper in there!" Alexia pointed out as she squinted into the locket.

"Here," Ela procured a pencil and gently pulled the piece of paper free.

As the folded paper fell to the table, Allie retrieved it, carefully unfolded it, and attempted to read it. "It looks like a letter. Not a love letter though. Maybe a letter from a parent to a child? It's so hard to read this aged writing. And this paper looks like it's going to fall apart any second!"

The girls leaned closer to get a better look at what Allie was reading. Yellowed with age, tiny folds crisscrossed the paper, wearing through the ink and making it nearly impossible to read. From what they could read, it did seem that it was a letter from an older person to someone much younger. Near the bottom of the letter, there was a post script. Kay pointed to the bottom, "Look, it's talking about some inheritance, something hidden. And it's signed 'Rose.'"

"I wonder who Rose is...Kay is it some relative of yours?" Ela asked.

"Not that I know of. I could be someone from more than two or three generations back. I'm not really all that sure about my family further back than that. I can ask my grandmother."

Allie had moved back to examining the locket. "I wonder if there's a way to loosen the hinge on this, like when you oil a door. Maybe there's a picture of Rose in here!"

Alexia thought for a minute. "Possibly. I can ask around. I know a few people who work with jewelry."

Ela squealed, "This is so exciting! It's like an age old mystery. Like in a book!"

Allie stuck her tongue out at her and hip-bumped her. "Dork."

Kay grinned, "It's okay. We're all dorks."

Hopefully that's good. I haven't written in a while :-P So I have a quick question: do you spell it "canceled" or "cancelled"? No looking it up! I want to know how you learned it - think of it more as a poll than a right and wrong thing.