The Treasure Box (27 page)

Roe brightened. “Yes, Hap tells me you're working on a guide to Alaska, and that you and a friend are going up there at the end of the summer.”

I'm going to Alaska? When did that happen?
Vita's mind lurched into overdrive, and then latched on to an indistinct memory . . . an envelope in her desk drawer, bearing the logo of Norwegian Cruise Lines. Reservations. A suite with a private balcony. In August. With Hattie. The trip had been booked for more than a year, ever since she had decided that Alaska would be her next project.

Fortunately, Hap saved her from looking like a total idiot. “Hattie Parker,” he said. “She and Vita have been best friends since—since when, honey? Grade school? Hattie lives in Atlanta, and every year she and Vita take a trip together.” He grinned. “I'd love to think I might be able to join in on one of these great adventures, but Vita and Hattie have been doing this forever, and although Vita has had the good grace not to say so, I'm sure they'd rather not have a poky old husband horning in on their fun.”

“Very smart, my boy,” Roe said archly. “Never come between a woman and her best friend.” She wagged a finger in his direction. “And I have one more piece of motherly advice for both of you. But first, let's move into the living room. Who wants coffee and pie?”

Vita said no to the coffee but accepted the pie, which turned out to be a heavenly concoction called French silk—a chocolate mousse made, of all things, with tofu. Roe wisely kept this tidbit of information from Vita until she had eaten every morsel and was eyeing the plate, wondering if licking off the remains would be impolite.

“Tofu?” Vita repeated.

Roe laughed. “Tofu. Amazing, isn't it? A low-calorie, low-fat dessert that tastes so good you'd think it must be sinful. Just goes to show that things aren't always what they seem.” She collected the plates, refilled Hap's coffee cup, and returned from the kitchen with a small blue box in her hands.

“I have something for you,” she said when she resumed her seat. “Something I've been saving for a long time.” She handed the box to Vita and sat down.

Hap scooted closer to Vita and put his arm around her.

“Mother,” he said, “are you sure you want to do this?”

“You don't have to accept it if it doesn't suit you. I won't get my feelings hurt, I promise.”

Vita turned to Hap, the box still closed in her hand. “You know what this is?”

He nodded. “Open it.”

With trembling fingers Vita pried up the lid. There, on a cushion of dark blue velvet, was the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. A wide, ornately-worked wedding band—clearly handmade and one of a kind—with a diamond in the middle and two small rubies flanking the center stone. The diamond, perfectly cut and flawless, caught the lamplight and sent out multi-colored reflections around the room. She looked at Hap, and then at Roe.

“Hap's father had this ring made for me—it was my wedding band. I always hoped Hap would have a sister, and I could pass it on to her.” She smiled, her eyes filling with tears. “Now I finally have a daughter to give it to.”

“It's beautiful,” Vita whispered. She looked into Roe's eyes.

“Are you sure you want me to have it?”

“I'm sure. You don't have to use it as your wedding ring, of course—”

“No!” Vita interrupted. “I'd—I'd be honored.” She turned toward Hap. “If it's all right with you, that is.”

Hap grinned. “Absolutely.”

Vita got to her feet and went to kneel beside Roe's chair.

“Thank you. I don't think you can know how much this means.

I feel—I don't know, as if I belong.”

Roe gathered her into a hug and held her there. “You do belong, my dear,” she whispered into Vita's ear. “To Hap, and to me. That's what family is all about.”

After a minute or two Roe released her, and Vita went back to the sofa and sat down at Hap's side.

“Now,” Roe said briskly. “I have something else to say. Are you listening?”

Vita dragged her eyes away from the diamond and ruby ring.

“Yes ma'am.”

“All right. I promise not to be an interfering mother-in-law, but there's one bit of unsolicited advice I feel I must pass on to the two of you. Marriage isn't a merging of two halves—it's the joining of two wholes. Ideally, marriage is a covenant between two people who draw out the best in each other, heart, mind, soul, and body. If you help each other become better, nobler, truer, more faithful individuals—in short, to develop into the kind of human beings God created you to be—you will have created something between you that is bigger than the sum of its two parts. But that kind of love is highly uncommon, and nurturing it is the work of a lifetime.”

An alarm went off in the back of Vita's mind, a vibration, very faint. Where had she heard those words before?

“You're a wise woman, Mother,” Hap said.

Roe shook her head. “I'd love to take credit for that, but it's your grandmother who was the wise one. She endured a lot of heartache in her life, and used it to build a faith as immovable as a mountain. If I manage to become half the woman she was before I die, I'll consider my life well spent.”

“She must have been a remarkable person,” Vita said. “I wish I could have met her.”

Roe looked at her watch. “Good grief! It's nearly eleven o'clock. I've kept you children far too long, rattling on with my old-lady blather.”

“We probably do need to go,” Hap conceded. “I need to get up early to unload the van and get the new stuff into my shop before nine.”

Vita got to her feet. “Won't you let us help with the dishes before we go? I hate to leave you with all this cleaning up to do.”

“Nonsense. I'm a little fussy about my kitchen, anyway. I'll have it done in a flash.” She hugged Vita and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Come see me often, dear,” she said, “with or without Hap. You're welcome any time.”

Vita returned the hug, strangely warmed by the woman's display of affection. “Thank you for the ring,” she said. “And for— well, for everything.”

Hap kissed his mother and herded Vita to the door.

Roe stood on the front porch, watching as they made their way to the van. Just before Vita climbed into the passenger's seat, she called out, “Vita! I forgot to ask you something.”

Vita turned. “Yes?”

“Hap tells me you now have possession of the Enchanted Treasure Box.”

“That's right.” Vita wondered how Roe knew about the box.

But of course Hap must have told her about it, or shown it to her in his shop before the day Vita found it.

“Good. It belongs with you. Take care of it—that box holds great value and significance. Someday I'll tell you about it, so you can pass it on to that niece of yours when it's her turn.”

Her turn?
Before Vita could respond, or voice the hundred questions that rose up in her mind, Roe waved and went back into the house. Vita climbed into her seat, Hap put the van in gear, and they drove away.

debate about whether the Vita awoke the next morning in a clouded half-light, with the sounds of thunder rumbling in the distance and rain pounding against the bedroom window. Roe Reardon's parting words swirled in her mind.
That box holds great value and significance. It belongs with you.
And,
I'll tell you about it someday.

What could Roe possibly have to tell her about the Treasure Box that she didn't already know?

After a quick shower, she brewed a pot of coffee and went to her office, carrying a plate of toast in one hand and her coffee cup and the blue velvet ring box in the other. She clicked on the computer, and while it booted up turned her attention to the wedding band.

She withdrew the ring from the box and watched as light from the lamp caught the diamond like a prism. A beautiful stone, flawless to the eye, and clear as ice. But there was nothing cold about it; it held fire and brilliance at its core.

Fire and ice. Robert Frost had written a poem by that title— a debate about whether the world would end in fire or ice. The poet had claimed, “From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.”

Vita considered the verse, intrigued by the personal implications she found in it. All her adult life, she had favored ice, keeping well back from the fire, not risking any chance of being burned again. And yet now that she had embraced the flame, she could barely recognize the ice maiden she had always been. Her years of self-imposed isolation seemed like a dream, a dim reflection of someone else's life, someone she couldn't imagine liking, much less being.

She ran her fingers over the gold and tested the heft of the wedding band in her palm. And suddenly Vita realized that the decision had been made, once and for all. There was no question of returning to the old way of life. Not one. Inasmuch as it lay within her power, she was never going back. Never.

Vita slipped the ring onto her left hand and found it smooth as satin, a perfect fit. She couldn't wear it, of course—she had to wait for the wedding. But there was no harm in trying it on.

She sat there for a full five minutes, turning her hand this way and that. If it hadn't been pouring buckets, she would have gone outside into the sun to catch the various plays of light across the diamond's face. Even on a rainy day, and in dim light, the wedding band was nothing short of magnificent.

But it could have been the prize from a Cracker Jack box, for all the difference it would have made to Vita. She had never felt so giddy, so much like a schoolgirl before, not even when she had
been
a schoolgirl. And now, as a mature woman of thirty-eight, she had to resist the urge to giggle, to write Hap's name on the front of her notebook, to dash out into the storm to carve their initials in the oak tree outside her window.

Idly she opened the middle left-hand drawer of the desk.

There, atop a stack of pale blue legal pads, lay the thick white envelope from Norwegian Cruise Lines. She opened the envelope and scanned the contents: an itinerary, some brochures from various ports of call, and two tickets, one in her name and one in Hattie's. August 2-10.

In the drawer next to the envelope was a small appointment book with a tan leather cover. Vita flipped through the book and scanned its contents, feeling a bit like a detective investigating someone else's personal items. Yes. There it was. The first two weeks in August were blocked off for the trip; apparently she and Hattie intended to spend a few days in Seattle before and after the cruise.

She turned pages in the calendar.
August 20, Florist. August 23, Caterer. August 27, Fitting
. For her wedding dress? Vita's heart did a little skip.
September 3, Deadline for Alaska project. September 21, Rehearsal Dinner. September 22, 4:00 P.M., WEDDING.

Wedding. Her wedding. She should be frightened, Vita knew. By all rights she ought to be scared out of her skull. But the closest she could find to fear was a small twinge of nervousness at the very back of her brain.

This was right. The right person. The right time. She would be ready on September 22.

Vita put the appointment book and cruise tickets back into the drawer and swiveled her chair around to face the computer.

The booting-up process was done, and silver stars on a deep blue field winked at her from the screen, like an old friend welcoming her home.

Amazing, how much a simple computer program could change a life. Love, indeed, was the key that unlocked every portal. In learning to care about Sophie and Rachel and Cathleen and the others, Vita had opened her heart to a whole new reality. She was no longer afraid, no longer compelled to keep the walls fortified and the gates locked. She knew the risk of being wounded, but now it no longer seemed such a terrible threat. Broken hearts healed. People got over being hurt. They learned to trust, learned to love again.

She pushed the Enter key and waited, increasingly aware of a change in her attitude toward the Treasure Box program. Vita was interested in finding out what happened with Sophia Rose, of course—the same way she might be interested in a well-crafted novel or a particularly compelling movie. But the recent turn of events in her life seemed much more real now than anything that might take place on the screen.

The scene that came up on the monitor was, evidently, a party of some kind. Music playing. People laughing. Couples jitterbugging on a dance floor while the strains of “Boogie Woogie

Bugle Boy” emanated from the speakers. Several of the men— people Vita didn't recognize—wore army uniforms.

The 1940s. World War II. More than twenty years had passed since the day of Rachel and Michael McCall's wedding, Vita's last glimpse into the Treasure Box program.

This was quite the celebration—V-E Day, perhaps? Everyone seemed happy and relaxed, but the location didn't look like a USO. More like a ballroom in a hotel, with chandeliers overhead and tables covered with white linen tablecloths.

A pinging noise, like a bell, got the crowd's attention, and the band faded into silence. Vita's view zoomed in on a long table on a dais at the front of the room, where a gentleman in formal morning attire was standing, tapping a spoon against the side of a crystal glass. He was middle-aged, with a slight paunch and a bit of a receding hairline, and on his left sat a lovely woman in a fawn-colored dress, her brunette hair done up in curls, with just a few streaks of silver at the temples.

Vita leaned close to the monitor and peered intently at the woman. Rachel Woodlea, maturing beautifully, a vision of elegance and charm. And the man standing beside her was Michael McCall.

“I'd like to propose a toast,” he called out, “to a woman who has always kept my life—well, interesting—” A wave of laughter rippled through the room. “And to the man who has now bravely taken up the challenge of living with her.” He raised his glass. “To the bride and groom!”