The Treasure Box (23 page)

At the moment, it felt more like a second chance.

22
BEHIND THE WALLS

T
he children had finally turned off the TV and gone to bed, and the house itself seemed to exhale a sigh of relief. Vita sat at the kitchen table with a glass of skim milk and a plateful of leftover cookies, letting her mind take in the events of the afternoon.

She bit into one of the frosted teacakes. They were surprisingly good—not too sweet, with a nice buttery texture. She hadn't remembered ever owning what Mary V called “Grandma Kirk's secret recipe,” but sure enough, the girl knew exactly where to find it and every ingredient it called for. Even Gordy finally broke down and joined in the fun, cutting his portion of the dough into robots and spaceships and frosting several of the plain round cookies to resemble black-and-white soccer balls and orange basketballs and little white baseballs stitched with red.

She picked up one of the baseball cookies and held it with her thumb and two fingers. Where on earth had she learned to throw a curve? Vita hadn't the foggiest idea, yet she could not only do it, but teach little Gordy the finer points of the technique as well. While the cookies were cooling, the three of them had played ball in the backyard until Vita slammed a home run over the garden wall, across the alley, and into the neighbor's flower bed. The man came out into the yard, yelling about his prize-winning begonias, and the three of them had run giggling into the house and sworn each other to secrecy.

Vita couldn't remember the last time she'd had so much fun. Or, to be more precise, the last time she'd had any fun at all. She felt like a sleepwalker, an amnesiac, a female version of Rip Van Winkle awakening to a world which looked familiar but was entirely different from anything she had ever known.

Once or twice during the weekend, she had struggled with a compulsion to leave the twins to their own devices and spend a few hours in the office with the Treasure Box program. For one thing, she was eager to find out what had happened to Rachel and Michael and little Sophia Rose. Their lives had become such an intrinsic part of her own that she felt a little guilty abandoning them.

But when she took a step back and regarded herself with a critical eye, Vita immediately concluded that reality—in this case, her time with the twins—was infinitely more important than a story, no matter how captivating. She would not become like one of those bored housewives who never let anything divert them from their soap operas. The Treasure Box program could wait.

And it had waited—until now. She glanced at the clock; it was 9:30, still early. She ate one more cookie, one of Gordy's spaceships, and drained the glass of milk, then went into her office, intending to turn on the computer. Instead, she picked up the Treasure Box from the table by the windows and dropped into her desk chair.

Moonlight dappled the expanse of yard in shades of gray and blue, and one silver ray crept through the glass and lighted on the box Vita held in her hands. She lifted the lid and ran one finger across the inscription underneath:
Love Is the Key That Unlocks Every Portal.

Mary Kate had called her “Sis” and said “Love you” instead of “Good-bye.”

And Vita had responded, “I love you, too.”

For a long time, while the moon shifted and the shadows deepened, she sat there—alone, and yet not alone. Wondering, wondering . . .

“Vita, I can't tell you what a wonderful weekend this was.” Mary Kate settled herself at the kitchen table, accepted a glass of iced tea, and took one of the remaining sugar cookies from the plate.

“Does that mean—” Vita looked around to make sure the twins weren't within earshot, then lowered her voice. “Does that mean you and Gordon are on the road to recovery?”

Mary Kate let out a little laugh. “Gordon? I don't know what's going to happen with Gordon, to tell you the truth. But we did have some profitable conversations during Boot Camp, and he said he'd think about continuing with couples counseling after this weekend.”

“That sounds promising.” Vita sat in the chair at right angles to her sister and wrestled with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, she was happy to see Mary Kate and realized that for two days she had been eagerly anticipating her sister's return. On the other hand, Mary Kate's arrival meant that her time with the twins was coming to an end, and Vita felt an unaccountable twinge of regret over the prospect of saying good-bye to them.

All weekend, as she had “walked the road set before her,” Vita had been aware of two conflicting realities—the isolation she had always thought of as her “real” past, and the “new” memories that assailed her, memories that included a close and loving relationship with her sister and niece and nephew.

Mary Kate was talking, responding to Vita's comment.

“Promising, yes. But it remains to be seen what happens now that we're back in the real world, whether he'll decide this relationship is worth the time and effort to work on it. In the meantime, I'm going to work on myself.”

Vita regarded her sister with intense curiosity. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It means that I made a decision this weekend, Vita. An important one.” She leaned forward. “I'm going to graduate school.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really. And I have you to thank for it. You've always inspired me, Sis. I told you I envied your brains, just as you envied my looks. But looks fade with age. Brains just keep getting stronger. It may be a bit late for me to start exercising mine, but better late than never. I'm going for a master's in social work, to become a counselor. If my studies end up making me more interesting to my husband, so much the better. But I'm not doing it for him—I'm doing it for myself.”

“You want to be a counselor?”

Mary Kate nodded and bit into another cookie. “Yep. Ever since I started going to counseling, I've been fascinated with the process. We've done family genograms, childhood memories, dream analysis—”

Vita moved her chair closer. “Dream analysis?”

“Yes, it's amazing what dreams can reveal. Not all of them, of course—some dreams are just leftover images from a day's experience, or the result of—”

“‘An undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, the fragment of an underdone potato'?”

“Exactly. That's from Scrooge, right?” Mary Kate laughed.

“Yes, some are just bad pizza, but some are pretty significant.

Call it your subconscious trying to get a message through, or God trying to communicate some truth about your life.”

Vita opened her mouth to lodge an automatic protest against the idea that God might speak through a person's dreams. But before she could say a word, her mind began to call up memories from her own recent dreams—Sophie in the meadow, her mother becoming a willow tree; the images of red that preceded the midnight slaughter at Benedetti's restaurant. And the most disturbing ones of all: the joyful dog and the somber, silent baby.

She raised her head to find Mary Kate's eyes boring into hers. “Did I touch a nerve?”

“No, no.” Vita tried to dismiss the idea. “Just some recent dreams I've had—they don't mean anything.”

“Come on, spill it.” Mary Kate crossed her arms and waited.

Vita hesitated, unsure whether she really wanted to pour out her innermost thoughts in her sister's presence. But at last she took a deep breath, and in a rush described the Sheltie she had left outside the garden wall and the infant in the crib she had neglected.

“They're just silly dreams,” she concluded. “Probably subconscious echoes from a computer program I've been using lately.”

Mary Kate looked at her. “How did you feel when you woke up? Did you sense that these dream images were important?”

“Yes,” Vita admitted reluctantly. “I got the impression that— well, that somebody was trying to tell me something.”

Her sister nodded. “And you felt—”

“Guilty. As if I had failed to take care of something entrusted to me, something I ought to have . . . loved.”

“Tell me about the dog.”

Vita frowned. “What about the dog? I was inside the garden, he was outside the wall, and there was no gate. I knew I was safe behind the walls, but had forgotten him, left him outside, and I couldn't get to him.” She focused on the memory of the Sheltie— exuberant, joyous. The word stuck in her mind. “Could he represent joy?”

Mary Kate raised an eyebrow. “Maybe.”

“OK.” Vita took a deep breath. “So I've created this safe enclosure, this life with high walls and no gate. I'm protected from being hurt, but I don't have joy.”

“Does that feel right?”

Vita felt tears sting her eyes. “Yes. But how can I let him in when there's no gate?”

“I don't know,” Mary Kate said. “But keep it on the back burner, and you'll come up with a solution.”

The answer presented itself to Vita's mind in an instant:
Knock down a wall
. She thought of the missing padlock on her own garden gate, and shivered.

“Now, what about the child in the darkened room?” Mary Kate prodded.

“Something I'm supposed to care for, that I've neglected?”

Vita shook her head. “I'm not sure.”

“What did the child look like?”

“Dark hair, huge brown eyes, a thin little face—”

“Like anyone you know?”

Vita felt a small twinge of recognition clutch at her heart.

“Like me.”

“And what was she doing?”

“Nothing. She was just standing there, not crying, not making a sound. Just waiting.”

“ Waiting for you to come and take care of her.”

Vita nodded. “Is it true that a child who is left uncared for finally ceases to cry and simply waits to die?”

“That can happen, yes. You might want to consider, Sis, if there could be something in your life—something important— that you've neglected over a long period of time.”

The answer came unbidden, as if dropped whole into her mind. “My inner self,” Vita murmured. “My soul. I've neglected my soul and shut joy out of my life.”

“By George, I think she's got it.” Mary Kate smiled.

Vita shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Now I have to figure out what to do with it.”

“That will come. Give it a while.”

Vita gazed at her sister as if seeing her for the very first time.

“It seems you've found your calling. You have a gift for this.”

Mary Kate patted her arm. “You're an easy case, Sis. It was all right there, waiting for you to see it.” She drained the last of her iced tea and stood up. “I'd better round up my brood and get home.”

Vita stood on the porch watching as the last light faded and the twins piled into the car. Everybody waved good-bye, and Mary Kate promised to call her in a day or so. At last the Volvo's taillights twinkled out of sight around the corner.

After a while Vita wandered into her office and turned on the desk lamp. Light puddled in a golden oval, illuminating the rich oak finish of the desktop and the stacks of research in her neglected Alaska files. The office felt so peaceful, so quieting. With a sigh of deep satisfaction she leaned back in her leather swivel chair and surveyed her domain. Her eyes swept over the windows facing out into the yard, the bookshelves along two walls, the bulletin board filled with postcards from the places she had written about—

Vita stopped. Something about the board had caught her eye. It looked . . . different. Maybe it was just the light.

She got up and turned on another lamp, then went and stood in front of the framed corkboard that held her collection of postcards. There was the Eiffel Tower, the cottage in the English Cotswolds, and yes, the
Biergarten
in Munich. But these weren't just postcards—they were
photographs
. With actual human beings in the foreground.

She pulled one down and held it closer to the light. It was a scene from Castle Combe, in England—that lovely little riverside village where Rex Harrison's version of
Dr. Doolittle
had been filmed. A cottage on the riverbank, built from golden Cotswold stone, with a brilliant swag of pink roses over the door, all set against a backdrop of rolling green hills. Quite a lovely scene, and quite familiar.

She peered at the faces in the photograph. Two women, one with a thin face, brown eyes, long dark hair pulled back at the nape of her neck. The other, shorter and rounder, with sandy hair and a strange puckered look around her mouth. Not unattractive, just distinctive, as if she had suffered scarring acne as a teenager. Like best friends out for a holiday, they were both smiling broadly, each with an arm draped over the other's shoulder.

Recognition pummeled the air from Vita's lungs with all the force of a physical blow.

She was looking at herself. Herself, with one arm around the shoulder of . . .

Hattie Parker.

23
THE LABYRINTH

V
ita scrutinized the photograph until her vision began to blur. It was Hattie, all right. Upon closer inspection with a magnifying glass, Vita could see faint distortions of the scars from the automobile accident—thin white lines crisscrossing the forehead and cheeks, a slight upward lift at the corner of the right eyebrow, a crook in the nose.

She hadn't laid eyes on Hattie since that day long ago in the high school parking lot. Hattie had been wearing that hideous black motorcycle jacket with the name “Scarface” embroidered above a skull and crossbones. And yet she could also remember them as friends. Best friends. Both single and unattached, they had traveled together on research trips for Vita's books. The journey to England had been the first, and one of the best.

She remembered the little place they had rented in the Cotswolds, a thatch-roofed cottage renovated from an old tithe barn. The fourteenth-century pub where they had dined every night on steak and kidney pie and pasty-type sandwiches called baps. The walking trips through the English countryside. The morning they had stumbled upon the ruins of an old Norman church in the verge where a cow pasture met the woods. The energetic rendition of
Twelfth Night
performed by a local troupe of players at the castle outside the village.