The Opal Legacy Part 10

Chapter Thirteen.

"I'm freezing, that's what I'm doing." Craig Ritter rubbed his gloved hands together. "I never realized it got this cold here in November."

"I like the cold weather. I'm even looking forward to the snow." Lesley walked toward him so he wouldn't see the headstone. The grave, she felt, was Jon's, and she wanted to shield it from Craig's eyes. "But you haven't answered me yet," she said. "Why did you come to Iron Ridge?"

"To see you. Let's keep moving, my feet get numb when I stand in one place too long."

She started walking beside him toward the path to the beach, then hesitated. What would Jon say if he knew Craig was here?

"Not that way," Craig said. "After sitting in an outboard for two hours I've had enough of the lake and the wind. We'll go inland."

"As long as we don't get lost."

"This looks like a trail we'll be able to follow and then find our way back without any trouble." The tall pines had been cut years before, leaving a swath of younger trees and brush. "I'll bet this used to be a road," he said, leading the way.

"I saw the boat on the lake," Lesley told him. "I never imagined it was you."

"I rented the outboard down near Marquette. They thought I was crazy to go out on the lake this time of year yet I didn't want to call you or come to your house. I was afraid for you."

"For me?"

"Because of what your husband might do."

"Don't be foolish. Jon might not think much of your inst.i.tute, and he'd get mad if he found you here, but he wouldn't harm me, not even if he knew I wrote to you. He doesn't know about my letter."

"I guessed he didn't when I saw the envelope had been mailed from California instead of Michigan."

"I didn't want to upset Jon." Why am I being so defensive? she wondered.

"After your letter came, the one about the president's illness, I had a chance to go to a parapsychology symposium in Ann Arbor. I was down there all last week. When I heard the president had recovered I knew I had to talk to you."

"But why?"

"I could explain away your first two predictions as chance. Yes, even the third one could have been coincidence. But this last, well, after you were right a fourth time I began to wonder."

"I don't know what you mean." Could he have misread her letter?

"You said the president would be stricken in late November and he was. You said he would recover and he did. I'm impressed."

"But I didn't..." She paused. "May I see the letter? Did you bring it?"

"I've got it here someplace." He pulled his right glove off by holding the leather fingers between his teeth, then thrust his hand into his coat and brought out a sheet of paper. "Here we are."

She unfolded the letter, staring in amazement at the page. The message was typed and the words were the same as she had written-except for the last sentence. Instead of saying the president would die, the letter read, "And then he will become better and live." Her name was scrawled across the bottom. The handwriting was not hers.

"You seem surprised," Craig said. "You did write me, didn't you? I thought this was your signature but I didn't check."

"Yes, I wrote you." She walked with her eyes averted, her mind in a whirl. She remembered leaving the envelope on the mantel for Jon to mail. Jon. He had opened her letter and subst.i.tuted his own, changing her prediction to make it wrong, not knowing she had deliberately misreported her dream. He read my mail, she thought. That letter was mine, not his, not ours. Her breath came rapidly as anger swelled in her. What made him think he had the right? she asked herself.

"Is something the matter?"

Shaking her head, she kicked a small stone on the path. "Oh," she said when the stone, frozen in the ground, did not move. As pain shot up her leg, she hopped a few steps on one foot. Craig held out his hand to steady her.

"Lesley, are you all right?" he asked.

Suddenly she was laughing at herself, the tension breaking, and tears came to her eyes. For a moment she couldn't stop laughing. "I don't know," she said, taking a deep breath. "I really don't know."

"Your predictions are remarkable. I've submitted a special report to the inst.i.tute's board of governors about them. That's the reason I came to this G.o.dforsaken country, to get you to change your mind about helping in our research. For the first time in all the years I've investigated psychic phenomena, I've found a possibility I'm ready to consider. I'm not saying I'm convinced, you understand, but I could be. I'm intrigued. Excited about your gift. Won't you let us test you?"

Lesley was tempted. This was a way to make Jon understand he didn't control her, show him she could make decisions for herself. She hadn't had much of a chance to make decisions since coming to Iron Ridge. If she didn't know better she might think he had deliberately tried to isolate her here.

"You wouldn't have to come to California," Craig said. "There are psychologists in Marquette who could conduct the experiments if I gave them some orientation. You could be tested in the city or they could come to your house. Or we'd pay your way to San Diego; the choice is yours. Why anyone would want to spend a winter in these woods, I'll never understand."

"There's something special about Iron Ridge. The trees and the lake are sort of, well, hypnotizing. In California, my mind was busy all the time, stirred up, but not by important things, more about driving on the freeways, work, a thousand and one details. Here I have peace, a serenity."

She paused in surprise. Why am I so quick to defend Iron Ridge? I'm uncomfortable in the house and uncertain about Jon. She looked at the graceful swoop of the pines, the long shadowed corridors between the trees; breathed the scent of the forest; felt the cold, clean air on her face. Can you love something you fear? Is this feeling the reason Jon came back, the reason the Hollisters always returned to Iron Ridge?

"Do I seem different to you?" she asked.

"Different?" He looked at her. "Yes, but I don't know what the change is, exactly. You talk of serenity, but you don't seem serene. Yet you're older, more mature than you were in California." He stopped, fl.u.s.tered. "I don't mean..."

"I know what you mean," she said. "I think I've changed. Being married, I suppose."

"I hesitated to come here because of your husband. Yet I felt I had to."

"I don't want to take your tests, Craig," Lesley said suddenly. "Perhaps in the future, but not now. I've told you how Jon feels. My marriage has to come first. I'd be challenging him, defying him, if I did what you want. Jon and I need more time to get to know one another."

"Are you sure you won't?"

"Positive." Her anger at Jon had receded. Probably, she told herself, he thought he was protecting her by altering her letter. He needed her, seemingly now more than ever. Craig Ritter had experience in psychology. Could he help? Should she ask him about Jon, about his moods? Reluctantly she decided she shouldn't.

"Watch out!" He gripped her wrist and she stopped.

"I wasn't looking." A few feet ahead of her the ground dropped away. She took a step forward to peer over the edge of a cliff where the side of the hill had been cut away.

"This must be the quarry," she said. They followed the track down one side and across the level ground. "Look." She pointed ahead at a black hole in the side of another hill. Vines and brush grew across the entrance to a tunnel and over piles of dirt and stone nearby.

"Is that the road?" Craig asked. "The road goes to the tunnel and ends."

"An iron mine. That's how Iron Ridge got its name." She glanced around at the darkening woods. "We'd better start back."

They turned and walked in silence past the quarry and over the hills. When they came to the clearing, the sun was low and the woods quiet. She led Craig to the path along the creek. Several times he seemed about to speak and she looked expectantly at him, but he shook his head.

"I didn't want to tell you this," he said finally, "but I haven't any choice. You're not safe here. I think you should leave Iron Ridge."

"Are you trying to frighten me? I haven't seen another soul since I've been at Iron Ridge. There's only the two of us, Jon and me."

"That's precisely what I mean." She glanced at him as he walked hunched over, hands in his pockets, eyes on the path.

"You can't be serious."

"I am. I investigated this fellow Hollister after I got your card with your new name and your address here in Michigan. I didn't like what I discovered."

"I don't want to know what you found," she said, stopping and facing him. "Whatever made you do something like that?"

Was he blushing? His face was so red from the cold she couldn't tell.

"I-I don't know, not for sure." He looked into her eyes. "Yes, I do know. I liked you, Lesley, right from the first. I couldn't get you off my mind; I think I told you that once before. I guess I don't have much experience with women and I've always been shy when I was with them, but with you I wasn't. I could talk to you even though at first what I said made you angry. When I found you were married, I was dumbfounded. I wanted to kick myself."

"I don't know what to say. I never realized how you felt."

"Now you'll think I'm jealous, that I'm trying to tear down this Jon Hollister because he married you. Maybe that's why I checked into his background but I didn't come to Iron Ridge because I was jealous. I'm frightened for you. Has he told you about his first wife?"

"Mary?" Lesley remembered the grave in the clearing. "I know about Mary."

"Did he tell you she probably killed herself?"

"He told me that."

"I'm surprised he did. From what I hear he might have had something to do with her death. Wait, don't interrupt, let me finish. I don't mean he killed her; he didn't, he wasn't even here at the time. She was despondent because of something he did. I don't know what it was."

"You've been listening to gossip. Whenever anyone kills himself, people are bound to talk." With a start she realized she was repeating Jon's words.

"Call it gossip if you like but don't shut your mind to what I'm saying. There's more. Your husband's behaved erratically since his wife died, made some questionable friends on the Coast, been involved in get-rich-quick business deals."

"He took Mary's death hard. He's still punishing himself."

"Haven't you wondered about his interest in you? How long did you know him before you were married? A few weeks?"

"Longer than that. Two or three months."

"Weren't you surprised when he asked you to marry him? Haven't you ever wondered whether he wasn't more interested in your ability to foresee the future than he was in you?"

"Jon didn't know about my abilities until we'd known each other a long time."

"Are you certain?"

Startled because he repeated the question she had asked herself, Lesley hesitated before answering. "I am," she said.

"And you know he needs money desperately to keep Iron Ridge?"

"Yes."

"That he's on the ragged edge of bankruptcy? That you're his last chance?"

"I know he's in debt."

"And Charles Randall. Do you know about him?"

"I'm tired of your third degree."

"But don't you see what's happened? You're practically a prisoner here at Iron Ridge. You never go anywhere, never see anyone."

"That's not so. Why, we're having a housewarming in a few days. We've invited more than sixty guests. I think you've said enough, Craig."

He kicked aside a dead branch. Ahead of them the path dipped to the beach. The sun was behind them, throwing the shadows of the trees across the sand to the water. When they came to the edge of the woods Lesley looked quickly up and down the sh.o.r.eline, found the beach empty.

"Where's your boat?" she asked.

"See that trunk half in the water?" He pointed to their left. "The boat's behind it." They walked to the fallen tree and Lesley saw he had pulled the outboard high onto the sand. With one hand on the prow he turned and faced her.

"Will you come to California with me?"

For one brief moment she knew she should go with him, knew she should leave Iron Ridge before it was too late. The moment pa.s.sed. "I can't," she said. "I love my husband. My place is with him." She pressed Craig's hand between hers. "Thank you," she said.

"For what?"

"For caring about what happens to me. You wouldn't have come here if you didn't." He seemed to study her, as though wanting to memorize her features, then he turned from her, pushed the boat into the water and jumped on board. Using the oar, he shoved the boat from the beach.

"If you need help," he said, "call or write."

"I will."

"Do you promise?"

"I promise."

When he bent over the engine and pulled the cord the motor sputtered and died. He tried again and this time the motor caught. As the boat headed out into the lake, the bow high in the water, Craig crouched in the stern looking back at her. In his long coat with the fur hat perched on his head, he seemed incongruous, like a visitor from another world, and she wanted to laugh. Or cry. Who can I believe? Who can I trust? she asked herself. She had suspected Jon before, once of taking the opal and then of meeting someone. Yet both times her suspicions had proved unfounded.

Craig did not wave; he made no sign to her. For a moment Lesley imagined she was in the boat in Craig's place, imagined she saw herself alone on the beach staring over the water, and then she could no longer see her features, only the solitary figure on the beach becoming smaller and smaller with the sh.o.r.e a narrow strip of sand stretching away on both sides, the forest dark behind, the hills beyond, while above the sun set with a flash of orange. She saw the girl on the beach wave, and she thought she heard her call out, but the sound was lost in the roar of the motor.

And then she was back on the sh.o.r.e watching the black dot of the boat disappear far to the south. Where can I turn? she asked herself. As the shadows lengthened over the lake she began to walk slowly along the beach toward Iron Ridge, toward home.

Chapter Fourteen.