The Treasure Box (26 page)

The girl was obviously fighting tears, but she bravely swallowed back her despondency. “Yes, sir. The little horse.”

Hap reached into the box and came up with a small bronze statue. “This one?”

“Yes, sir. But you got it fair and square.” She looked up at her father, who winked at her and nodded. “My dad taught me how to bid. And I couldn't go over five dollars.”

“Yeah,” Hap said. “Your dad's right; we all have to set limits on what we're willing to spend. I'm an antique dealer, and I've been outbid on things I wanted lots of times.” He scratched his head. “This was going to go in my shop, but I'll tell you what— I've got a lot of stuff to drag home, and this little horse is just weighing me down. You wouldn't be interested in buying it, by any chance?”

Briefly the girl's eyes lit up with anticipation, but then her face fell and she shook her head. “Like I said, I only have five dollars. It's worth more than that.”

“It is,” Hap agreed. “But I've got other things to consider, such as space limitations and transportation costs and my over- head in the store. It might pay me just to go ahead and unload it while I've got a buyer.” He gave the girl a serious look. “How does three dollars sound?”

She cut a glance at her father, then nodded vigorously. “You've got a deal.”

The girl dug in her pockets and came up with two rumpled bills, three quarters, and a fistful of pennies. She handed the money over, took the little horse, and shook his hand, all business.

As Vita and Hap turned to leave, the girl's father caught him by the sleeve. “Thank you,” he said.

“My pleasure.” Hap grinned at him. “It's the most fun I've had all day.”

As Vita recalled the incident, she turned to Hap, who had just pulled the van into the driveway of a little white house.

“How much was that statue worth—the horse you gave to the little girl?”

“Not gave—
sold,
” he corrected with a chuckle. “I might have gotten forty or fifty dollars for it.” He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Don't tell my mother, OK? She already thinks I'm a miserable soft touch.”

“Soft touch, yes,” Vita answered. “Miserable, no.” She unbuckled her seat belt, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek.

“You're quite a man.”

“I'm just a sucker for a pretty girl, that's all.” Hap's ears reddened, and he ducked his head sheepishly.

Vita laughed. “Do we need to have a discussion about flirting?”

“I don't think so.” He reached across the space between the bucket seats, took her hand, and stroked it lightly, tenderly. Vita's rational mind set off an alarm that she was on dangerous ground, that she could get her heart broken, that it had happened before and could happen again. But she had never felt safer, or happier, or more loved than she felt at this moment.

He leaned forward. Vita shut her eyes, waiting for the kiss.

Five seconds. Ten. Nothing.
Maybe he's trying to work up his nerve,
Vita thought. She kept her eyes closed and waited some more.

After about twenty seconds, she could stand it no longer. She slit one eyelid open and peeked.

Hap was snared sideways in the bucket seat, his left hip wedged under the steering wheel and his right pocket hung on the floorboard gearshift. He had been caught halfway to the kiss and was laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

“That's what I get for trying to be romantic,” he said when he had regained his breath. “We'd better go in, or Mama will accuse us of necking in the car, and we'll never hear the end of it.”

Hap's mother's home was one of those small, compact Grandma houses—white, with dark green shutters and a postage-stamp yard filled with multicolored annuals. As soon as she stepped across the threshold, Vita had the sensation of being transported back in time. The living room was furnished with maroon velvet furniture festooned with lace doilies and antimacassars. A large ornate candelabra dominated a baby grand piano crowded into the corner, and the dining room, an alcove separated from the living room by an oval archway, was pure Duncan Phyfe—a mahogany claw-foot table with six lyre-back chairs.

“You can see I come by my love of antiques honestly,” Hap whispered as he ushered her into the room. “Mother just doesn't realize this house isn't big enough to accommodate them all.” He raised his voice. “Mama? We're here!”

Vita hadn't been quite sure what she expected of Hap's mother. Somewhere in the back of her mind, an undiscovered memory came to her aid: the woman was a seventy-nine-year-old widow who had given birth to her first and only child at the age of thirty-six. After seeing the house, Vita anticipated a frail, regal, birdlike lady with Victorian lace up to her chin and an effusion of silver-white hair piled high on her head. The person who emerged from the kitchen, however, couldn't have been further from that image if she had deliberately aimed at its opposite. About five-four, with dazzling blue eyes and short hair in that platinum shade of blonde going to gray, she looked to be seventy-nine going on sixty. She wore faded blue jeans, a blue and purple striped rugby shirt, and Nike running shoes.

“Ah, Mama, there you are!” Hap went to her and kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry we're a bit late; the auction was a big one and went on longer than we thought.”

“That's fine; I only got back from my tennis game an hour ago.” She gave Hap a poke in the ribs. “Hampton James Reardon,

Junior, where are your manners?”

Hap grimaced. “Oh. Right.” He pulled himself together and began a formal introduction. “Mother, I'd like you to meet Vita Kirk. Vita, my mother, Mrs.—”

“Oh, posh,” she interrupted. “Stop this nonsense.” She pushed him aside and hauled Vita into a hug worthy of a Kodiak bear. “I'm so glad to meet you, my dear.” She released Vita and cast an acid look in Hap's direction. “
Finally
. I was beginning to suspect that Number One Son here had made you up entirely from his imagination.”

“I'm happy to meet you, too, Mrs. Reardon—”

“None of that ‘Mrs.' business, now,” she interrupted with a wave of one hand. “I may be a certified antique, but I won't have my son's fiancée calling me ‘Mrs.' as if I'm some prudish nineteenth-century dotter.”

Vita's brain had flooded out on the word
fiancée
, and it took her a minute or two to pull in enough oxygen to get the engine running again.

“—Roe,” Mrs. Reardon was saying when Vita's attention returned. “Please, call me Roe. All my friends do, and I want us to be friends. Good friends.”

“Yes. Roe. Thank you.” Vita's mind spun. It was one thing to like Hap, to be friends with him, even, perhaps, to have romantic feelings for him. But
marriage?
Could she possibly have agreed to marry him?

Hap's mother led them both back into the kitchen, all the while carrying on a spirited conversation with her son, but Vita couldn't hear a word of it. Somehow, in the midst of her mental fog, Vita helped Roe get dinner put on the table, going through the motions like a wooden wind-up doll. An animated discussion about antiques and the auction and Hap's plans for enlarging the shop swirled around her. Then they were sitting at the table—Hap at the head, his mother and Vita on either side. And Roe said, “Hap, would you like to say grace?”

Vita felt Hap's hand close around hers and saw Roe reach across the table to complete the circle. Vita started to bow her head, but with a sidelong glance she saw that Hap had his eyes open, his gaze drifting from the food on the table to his mother's face and then to hers. “God of the Universe,” he prayed, “you give us many gifts. The bounty of the land for our nourishment, the warmth of family, the joys of work and play. Thank you for all these blessings, for laughter, and for love.” He smiled in Vita's direction. “Especially for love. May we ever live with a grateful heart. Amen.”

Vita felt something tear at the seams of her mind—not another small rip, but a violent pulling apart of the whole fabric of reality. The entire curtain rent in two, from top to bottom.

The darkness lifted, and from the depths of her soul came a shuddering, like an inner earthquake with Vita at its epicenter. On the outside, nothing had changed, but within, she sensed herself standing in the presence of some glorious celestial occurrence.

She had heard this prayer before, not once, but many times.

Jacob Stillwater's prayer. The prayer that Hap had offered before every meal they had shared together. Hap didn't remind Vita of Jacob because of similar physical characteristics. He reminded Vita of Jacob because of his
soul
.

Vita had once thought—a long time ago, it seemed—that if she could ever give her heart to any man again, it would be a man like Jacob Stillwater. Now that man sat next to her, holding her hand, and all the years of disillusionment and suspicion retreated into the background. It didn't matter anymore that Gordon Locke had betrayed her, or that Derrick Knight had betrayed both Rachel and Cathleen. The pain and distrust she had harbored for so many years seemed but a distant storm dissipating on the far horizon.

Vita could feel the old memories getting weaker, losing their hold on her. She could still envision herself as angry, bitter, and isolated, but that person didn't seem to have much to do with her anymore. She could recall being cynical and distrustful and having no patience whatsoever for anything that reeked of religion, but she could no longer quite remember why.

Her mind wrapped around the words of Hap's prayer:
Thank you for these blessings, for laughter, and for love
.
May we ever live with a grateful heart.

And her own soul responded:
Amen
.

25
FAMILY LEGACY

V
ita smiled across the table at Roe Reardon. Now that she was able to relax a little, and quit obsessing about her newly discovered status as a woman engaged to be married, she found that she really liked Roe. The woman was intelligent, incisive, sensitive, and down-to-earth—much like the son she had raised.

“So tell me, Vita,” Roe said just as Vita had forked up a mouthful of the tenderest pot roast east of the Continental Divide, “what's your family like?”

Hap choked with laughter as Vita tried to swallow and answer at the same time. She elbowed him in the ribs to shut him up, took a sip of iced tea, and tried to compose herself.

“Well—” Vita hesitated for a moment, then said, “Both my parents are deceased. I have one sister, three years younger, who lives in Asheville with her husband. Her children, my niece and nephew, are twins. Mary Vita and Gordy. They're eleven.”

“You must be very close if your sister named her daughter after you.”

Given the events of the past few days, it wasn't an easy question. Which was true—the years of estrangement from Mary Kate, or the recent development of having a sister she could talk to, confide in? The earlier memories—the enmity, the resentment, the alienation—were still there, but they were rapidly fading into the background, like remnants of a disturbing dream from which she had finally awakened. The good relationship— the laughter, the love, the shared secrets—now seemed much more real. Vita heard Mary Kate's voice reverberate in her mind, calling her
Sis
, saying,
I love you.

“We
are
close,” she answered at last. “I'm very proud of Mary Kate. She's bright and beautiful and has raised two wonderful, loving children.”

“Who, incidentally, adore their Aunt Vita,” Hap said.

Vita grinned. “Mary Kate has just decided to go back to school, to get her master's in counseling.”

Roe's blue eyes turned wistful. “I always wished for a sister,” she mused. “Didn't want Hap to be an only child, either—it just turned out that way.”

“Your mother wasn't able to have other children?” Vita blurted out before she realized how insensitive the question might seem. “Sorry, I didn't mean to—”

“It's all right.” Roe waved a hand. “I never knew my mother or my father, so there aren't really any painful memories involved.

My aunt and uncle raised me, and since they were the only parents I ever knew, I always called them Mom and Dad. They wanted to have other children, but Mom had two miscarriages, and the doctors told her it would be safer for her not to try again.”

“They've passed on, I gather?”

“Yes. But they lived to see me married, and to see their grandson. Dad died when Hap was a boy, but Mom lived to see him graduate from college. She lived with us the last few years of her life.” Roe flashed a wry grin in Vita's direction. “But don't worry, dear—I won't expect you and Hap to take me in when I'm old and feeble.”

“I can't ever imagine you as either old or feeble,” Vita countered. “But as far as I'm concerned, there would be no question about your living with us if you ever needed to do so.” Vita heard the promise come out of her mouth before she could stop it. She glanced at Hap, who was smiling and nodding. And she realized that the words were true. She sat there, unable to speak, amazed at what was happening to her. Where most people had what the psychologists called
boundaries,
Vita had always had
fortresses
. She had spent a lifetime keeping people not just at arm's length, but as far away as possible, outside the walls, beyond the barriers.

And now not only had the gate to her walled garden been unlocked, but the walls themselves were coming down, stone by stone.

“Do you see your sister's family often?” Roe was asking when Vita tuned back in.

It took Vita a minute to realize that the topic of conversation had circled back to Mary Kate and the twins, and she stumbled for an answer. “Not nearly often enough,” she answered truthfully. “But I expect that will change, now that—” She stopped suddenly, realizing that the logical conclusion to the sentence was a revelation about the transformations that were occurring in her own life. She would never be able to explain
that
. “Now that I'm almost finished with my new book,” she ended lamely.