The Treasure Box (7 page)

Vita looked closer. Something lay motionless in the water, half propped against the bank. A bedraggled doll, filthy and waterlogged, its dress torn to ribbons.

No. Not a doll. A child.

The footsteps accelerated, and she caught an echo: “Sophie!

Sophie!” It was Jacob Stillwater.

“Here!” Vita shouted aloud. “She's over here!”

But of course, no one could hear her. This wasn't real. Still she couldn't seem to quiet the pounding of her heart or stem the surge of adrenaline that shot into her veins.

She could see Sophie's face more clearly now, pale and gray and crisscrossed with lacerations—from tree branches in the water, perhaps, or sharp edges of the rocks. Like a reflection in a broken mirror. Like the spider-web pattern of a shattered windshield.

Like Hattie.

The memory unfolded and settled down on Vita, a thick woolen blanket thrown over her head, cutting off both light and air. How could she have forgotten, buried that image so deep?

The picture of Hattie Parker's face, scarred beyond recognition.

Seventh grade. The year she lost her best friend without really knowing why.

Hattie had just turned thirteen, and puberty had not been kind to her. Awkward and homely and devastated by her parents' divorce, she had begun acting out—letting her grades slide, drinking on the sly, hanging around with older kids, a wild and rebellious bunch from high school.

Vita had caught up with Hattie at Little Pigs' Barbecue, a local teen hangout, the afternoon before their seventh grade history midterm. “Let's go home and study,” she said. “You can have dinner at our house.”

Hattie had refused. “Some of us are going out,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at a gang of pimply-faced boys and longhaired girls who jostled one another on the hood of an old blue convertible. She didn't say so, but the message was clear:

Vita was not invited.

“But it's a school night,” Vita protested. “And the exam tomorrow—”

“You're not my mother, OK? So quit hovering.” Hattie stormed away, and Vita went home to study alone.

The call came at 11:35 that night. A one-car accident, head-on into a telephone pole on a deserted road outside of town. The driver, a sixteen-year-old sophomore who had received his license five weeks before, had been killed instantly. Hattie had gone face-first through the windshield. Half a twelve-pack of beer lay on the floorboard, and six empty cans littered the backseat.

The doctor wouldn't let her into the room, but Vita went to the hospital anyway, every afternoon for a week. Not a single one of Hattie's new friends ever once set foot in the place. Finally the nurses let her go in—ten minutes, they said. No more.

The visit took less than five. Hattie sat propped up in the hospital bed, her face a patchwork of stitches and puckers and swollen bruises. It had taken the ER doctors nine and a half hours to remove the glass from her face and put her back together. Half an inch closer, and she would have lost her right eye.

“How'd you get in here?” she slurred, her mouth twisting in a direction it wasn't meant to go.

“I've been here waiting to see you every day since the accident. The nurses finally let me in.” Vita set a small potted plant and a card on the bedside table. There were no other flowers in the room, no cards, no balloons. Just bare white walls and a hanging drip that went into a needle in Hattie's left elbow. Her eyes flitted back and forth from Hattie's ruined face to the window, to the muted television, to the foot of the bed. She didn't know where to look.

“Go ahead and say it.” Hattie turned her head to one side and closed her eyes.

“Say what?”

“
I told you so.
”

“I didn't say that.”

“But you thought it.” She opened her eyes. “So high and mighty, Vita. Always right. Always in control.”

Vita frowned. “I didn't come here to fight with you. I came because—”

“Because you wanted to see the freak? Well, go ahead. Take a look. Take a good hard look.”

“You're not a freak, Hattie. The doctors can fix it. It'll take some time, but it'll be all right. At least you're alive.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Guess I should count my blessings.”

“I'm so sorry, Hattie. I just want you to know that—”

“That you'll always be my friend?” Hattie interrupted. “Don't say it, Vita. Just don't. I can't stomach your pity. So just leave, all right?”

Vita left. For a while she held out hope that the accident might serve some good purpose, that she and Hattie could be friends again. But it never happened. Hattie recovered, got out of the hospital, and went on with her life—a life that no longer included Vita Kirk. Once, in high school, Vita saw her in the parking lot, getting onto a motorcycle with some guy twice her age.

She wore a black leather jacket with a skull and crossbones embroidered on the back. The banner above the skull read
Scarface
.

Hattie lived, but the friendship died. Vita never really understood why. What she did understand was that when you cared about people and trusted them, they betrayed you. Always. One way or another, they always left you, always let you down.

By some miracle, the searchers found Sophie Stillwater in time.

“She's alive!” Jacob shouted as he gathered the limp, dripping body into his arms. “Thank God—she's breathing!”

He fought his way out of the tangle of willow branches and up onto the bank, and somebody tucked a heavy coat around the shivering girl's shoulders.

“Papa,” she murmured. “I knew you'd come. I prayed, Papa, and Mama kept me safe until you found me.”

Jacob pushed a sodden lock of hair away from her face. “She's burning up with fever. Let's get her home.”

For ten days little Sophie floated between this world and the next, and although for Vita the timespan was compressed, she knew that the longer Sophie's fever continued, the less chance the child had of surviving. Rachel came every day and sat at her friend's bedside with the blue Treasure Box on her lap. Bridget hovered, feeding Sophie sips of broth from a spoon and cooling her brow with a damp rag. Jacob hung in the doorway with a bleak, haggard look on his face.

Then, on the eleventh day, Sophie's fever broke. The angry red blotches on her cheeks faded. She slept—not feverishly, shaking with chills and sweats, but a sweet, deep sleep, twelve hours of it. She woke up hungry, ate soup, talked a little. Jacob and Bridget smiled again. Everyone breathed easier.

Everyone except Sophie.

“It's pneumonia,” the physician said, snapping his black bag shut. “She's inherited her mother's weak lungs, it seems. Keep her upright and quiet.”

“But she'll be all right, won't she?” Jacob persisted. “She'll get well.”

“It's possible her condition may resolve itself,” the doctor said.

“Only time will tell.”

Sophie was lying propped against the head of the bed when Rachel came to visit. “I kept this for you,” Rachel said, holding out the Treasure Box. “I dried it out and cleaned up the locket, but I'm afraid your pretty green ribbon got ruined.”

“That's all right.” It hurt to breathe, and Sophie was so tired she could barely talk, but she took the box and opened it. Inside lay the handkerchief doll, a bit the worse for wear, with the locket twined about its neck on a ribbon the color of mud. “I see you rescued Titania.”

Rachel nodded. “And you rescued me,” she choked out, fighting tears. “And now—oh, Sophie, I'm so sorry.”

Sophie waved a hand to brush the words away. “There's nothing for you to be sorry about. It wasn't your fault. I'm fine.

Honestly.”

She fingered the locket, then removed it from the doll and placed it around her own neck. “I'll get a new ribbon. A pale green one, like—” She stopped suddenly. “Rachel, can you keep a secret?”

“You know I can. We're friends, aren't we? Best friends.”

Sophie smiled. Even smiling hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt. “I saw Mama.”

Rachel's eyes widened. “When? Where?” she demanded. “Oh, Sophie, do you suppose that means you've got the sight?”

“No. It wasn't like that. Not a vision, I mean. It seemed— well, like a dream, but very
real
.” She sighed and leaned her head back against the pillows.

“Can you tell me?”

Sophie tried to take a deep breath, but her chest felt as if a heavy iron ball had settled on it. The air only went down as far as her breastbone, and all she could manage was a shallow little gasp. Still, she went on.

“I was in the river—it was freezing cold, don't you know, and I was terrified. I saw the rapids come up to get me, and then I was pulled down. Something was tearing at my face.” She reached up and touched gingerly at one of the cuts across her cheek. “A tree branch under the water, I think. My head hit on something hard. And then she was there—”

“Your mother? She died when you were six.”

“Yes, but I saw her.” Sophie's eyes held Rachel's. “You do believe me, don't you?”

“Of course I do. Go on.”

“She was standing on the bank, wearing a long, flowy kind of dress—the prettiest dress I had ever seen, a pale yellow green, so pale you could almost see through it. And her hair was loose— not tied up, like she usually wore it—so that it flowed too, around her shoulders and nearly down to her waist. She almost looked like—like a mermaid.”

Rachel leaned forward. “And then what happened?”

“She opened her arms and began to sing to me, motioning for me to come to her. And then I was with her, and she was holding my head in her lap and singing, stroking my hair. I wasn't cold anymore. Not until Papa pulled me out of the water.”

Talking so much wore Sophie out. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Now the air only went down a little below her shoulders. But she had to finish.

She pushed the Treasure Box in Rachel's direction. “You're my best friend, Rachel. I want you to have this.”

“I'll take care of it for you if you like,” Rachel said, misunderstanding. “Until—”

“No,” Sophie gasped. “It's yours to keep. Forever. So you won't forget me.”

“Forget you?” Rachel's voice grew agitated. “I could never forget you!”

“Remember me,” Sophie whispered. “Remember.” She closed her eyes. “Can you hear it? The singing? It's so beautiful. So warm and flowy and green.”

She wanted to tell Rachel more about the song, but the air had all gone out and wouldn't come back in again. Then she saw her mother coming toward her, smiling, her dress swirling around her like rivulets of water, like music on the breeze.

Like the branches of a willow tree in spring.

The light grew brighter and brighter until Vita had to shield her eyes from the monitor. When she looked again, the computer screen had gone black.

7
THE MORNING AFTER

V
ita came to, groggy and disoriented, feeling as if she had been on a three-day bender. Yellow sunlight filtered through the sheer lace curtains and splashed across her comforter, bathing the room in a rose-gold brightness. She slitted her eyes and peered at the little china clock on her bedside table. Ten-fifteen.

Ten-fifteen? Impossible. She had gone to bed a little after nine the night before. How could she have slept the clock around, and then some? Rising early was something of a religion with Vita Kirk, or at the very least an obsession. She hadn't set an alarm in years, but she was always awake and moving by seven, even if she had worked until midnight. Only lazy people lolled around in bed after sunup.

She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Every muscle in her body protested. Her head throbbed, and her sinuses felt as though they were packed with concrete. She let out a groan.

No, definitely not a three-day bender. More like a six-car pileup, with Vita right in the middle.

Maybe a shower would help. She staggered to the bathroom and brushed her teeth while the water heated up. Once under the spray, she stood there for a full five minutes, barely moving except to turn and turn again so that the steaming pulse pummeled first her back and shoulders, then her chest. Her sinuses began to clear, and the pounding in her head eased a little.

But not the tightness in her chest.

Despite the losses Vita had endured in her lifetime, she had little experience of true grief. When Gordon chose Mary Kate over her, a cold blue anger rose up inside her, a wall of ice that shielded her and kept her invulnerable to the heat of any passion.

By the time her father died, she couldn't feel much of anything.

She could only watch with detached curiosity as her mother shriveled in upon herself like a night-blooming flower against the blazing noonday sun.

Sophie's death, however, had somehow pierced beyond the wall. Vita didn't know how it had happened, but she did know— instinctively, if not experientially—that this was what grief was like. A bottomless, empty pit. A raw place on the soul, an open wound that welcomed the purging burn from every tear.

Scalding water ran down Vita's face, and she tasted an unexpected mixture of shampoo and salt. For a long time she stood there, crying, until the shower turned tepid and she began to shiver.

I have to get hold of myself,
she thought
. This is ridiculous. How can I weep so bitterly for a child I've only known through a few brief scenes on a computer screen?
And yet she could still see the little rag-doll figure lying among the willows, feel the weight in her own chest as Sophie's lungs fought for air, hear the song of the willow-woman as she sang her little girl into the great beyond.

Maybe it was because Sophie was so young. Or maybe it was because the friendship with Rachel called up painful memories of losing Hattie. Whatever it was, it was over. Sophie was gone.