The Opal Legacy Part 11

As she walked back to the house in the dusk, Lesley saw their footprints in the sand-Jon's deep and decisive, her own shallow and hesitant. The house was dark except where light from the kitchen windows fell in elongated rectangles on the lawn. Lesley sighed as she opened the door, glad to be home yet reluctant to face Jon. I need time to think, she told herself.

He stood beside the kitchen table with a brown bowl in one hand and a long wooden spoon in the other. "Have I ever made cheese pancakes for you?" he asked.

"I've never eaten cheese pancakes in my life." He constantly surprised her. He might be moody; she might suspect him of being devious; but he was seldom dull.

"The proper name for the pancakes," he told her, "is blintzes. My mother used to make them. Have we any sour cream? We should have sour cream with blintzes."

"I think there's some in the refrigerator." She handed him the container.

"I've been home for over an hour," he said. "I looked through the house but I couldn't find you."

"I walked farther along the beach than I realized. I went beyond the creek and almost halfway to the point."

As she walked past him to the stairs, she watched his face but he gave no sign he either believed or disbelieved her. "Don't be too long," he said as he stirred the batter. "I'm ready to fry the pancakes."

After supper they sat in an armchair in the living room with the drapes shut and steam hissing in the radiators. Jon turned off the lights and she thought he was about to suggest moving to the library. Instead he thrust newspapers beneath a pile of kindling in the fireplace, lit them and, pulling a leather chair next to hers, sat down. Together they watched the fire leap from the kindling to enfold the logs with a pulsing yellow flame.

"Would you like a drink?" he asked. "I'm going to have one."

"Yes. I've been on edge all day. Probably the housewarming being the day after tomorrow is beginning to give me stage fright."

"It's not too late to call the party off."

"No, I'll be all right. And we don't have time to cancel now. As a matter of fact I'm looking forward to having people at Iron Ridge. We spend too much time by ourselves; we'd get along better if we saw more people."

"A manhattan all right with you?" he asked as he took bottles from a shelf on the sideboard.

"Fine." She heard the clink of ice as he stirred the drinks. He handed her a thin-stemmed gla.s.s in which a cherry floated in a golden liquid.

"Strong," she said as she sipped the drink.

"I don't object to seeing people," he said, "but I thought we got along pretty well."

"Most of the time we do. But once in a while I can't reach you; you seem to be off by yourself. Then you make cheese pancakes or give me a present like the pendant and all of a sudden we're all right again. I don't mean you have to give me gifts, it's knowing you want to please me."

"Yet you don't wear the pendant."

"I will at the housewarming. In fact I had the opal in mind when I bought my new dress."

"I'm going to feel like a stuffed animal in a museum when all the Marquette curiosity seekers come to stare. Ida Beasley, old Judge Tanner, Andy Bennett, Clara Saunders." He gave a mock shudder. "Maybe we should cancel the party after all."

"I'll be the one on display-Lesley Hollister, the new bride from California. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you Upper Peninsula natives aren't suspicious of anyone who comes from California."

"Not just from California. They have doubts about anybody who lives more than twenty miles away. But I'm the Hollister with the enigmatic past, not you."

"I just hope we haven't forgotten anything; we only have two more days." They discussed buying flowers to decorate the house, where to park the cars, and the final arrangements with the caterers and Mrs. McAllister, the cleaning woman.

"You haven't shown me your dress," he said. "What color did you pick?"

"Black. Very simple with a long skirt and a high neckline. The fire opal is beautiful against the black."

"I doubt if many of the guests have ever seen an opal, let alone one as large as yours. Or as powerful. You haven't mentioned any more dreams since the night after Chet Hawley was here."

"Did you ever talk to him again?"

"No. I gave up the idea. Too risky."

"Could I have another drink?"

"You haven't told me about your dreams," Jon persisted when he handed her the refilled gla.s.s.

"I've only had one other since I've been at Iron Ridge. Weeks ago, before he had his heart attack, I dreamed the president was ill." She hesitated. What should I tell Jon? she wondered. He had changed the letter so he knew she had written to the inst.i.tute. How could she explain the contradiction between the dream and the report she had sent to Craig Ritter?

"I dreamed I went to the post office in Marquette. An old man with a cane came in while I was waiting in line and said the president had recovered, that he'd lived."

"You didn't tell me."

"I didn't think you'd be interested but I should have mentioned the dream. I don't know why I didn't."

"I care about what you do, what happens to you. I'd like us to have the kind of marriage where we share as much of ourselves with each other as we can."

"I haven't told you the rest. After I had the dream I wrote to the inst.i.tute in La Jolla and told them the exact opposite of what I'd seen. I said the president would die. I knew you'd be upset if they tried to have me take their tests again so I decided to end their interest in me once and for all."

"I don't remember seeing a letter from you to the inst.i.tute."

Lesley bit her lip so she wouldn't blurt out that she knew he had opened her mail. "I put it in a letter to Lucy Douglas," she said. "She's one of the nurses I knew at the hospital in San Diego."

Jon placed his gla.s.s on a table and walked to stand beside her chair. "Have you heard from them since, from the university?"

"I don't expect to after making a wrong prediction. You don't think they'll bother me now, do you?"

"I suppose not, but you never know. It's easy for those big outfits to get their records mixed up." She felt his hand on her shoulder. "Lesley, I'm finding out more about you all the time. The better I get to know you, the more I like you." Looking up she saw the firelight glint from his brown eyes, masking them.

"I want to live in the present," she said. "Just us, you and me. No one else, nothing else. The past is over. We can begin again, it's not too late." She gripped his hand. "Can't we begin again?"

"I only wish we could leave the past behind. You don't know how much I wish we could."

"We can. We'll start now, forget what's gone before, forget the inst.i.tute and the letter and my foreseeing. Forget Mary."

"Mary? Why bring her up?"

"She's a ghost, haunting you. I can't compete with a ghost. Let's make the party our celebration of a new beginning. A commencement. I love you, Jon. I want you to be happy more than I want anything else in the world." As she pleaded with him, she choked, and tears filled her eyes. She laid her cheek on the back of his hand.

"So much has happened," he said. "More than Mary's death. Now there's Iron Ridge and the money problem."

"Do you want to cancel the party to save money? I don't mind, really I don't."

"No, we're too late; we've gone too far, made too many plans. We'll have to go through with it no matter what."

Did he refer only to the party? She looked at the firelight flickering on his face but his impa.s.sive features told her nothing. When will I ever know him? Someday, she told herself, someday I will. She finished her drink and stood up, holding on to the edge of the table for she was suddenly dizzy. A throbbing began behind her right eye.

"A headache?" Jon asked when she told him. "Why don't you go to bed? We both have a lot to do tomorrow. I'll be upstairs as soon as I finish some work in the office." The office. The only room in the house he had closed against her.

"Why do you keep the tower locked?" she asked.

"I borrowed some books from a historical society in Marquette I wouldn't want anything to happen to."

Not satisfied, she climbed the stairs and, in the bedroom, looked out of the darkened window at the light from the first floor of the tower. The sky had clouded over and the night was black. She took an aspirin, undressed, and lay in bed with the covers pulled high about her. The room spun around and around and around, so she sat up, clenching her hands and blinking, then buried her face in the pillow. Finally the spinning stopped and she slept.

She was climbing a hill, the hill above the beach at Iron Ridge, the lake far below. Above her a man climbed toward the outcropping of rock at the highest point of the promontory.

"Jon!" she called, but he did not hear her. Mist, cold and damp, swirled about her. Ahead, through the mist, she saw a boulder and a chokecherry tree. The ground shifted beneath her feet and she stopped, frightened, and glanced around her. When she turned again the boulder and the tree were gone.

"Jon!" she called again but her voice was whipped away by the wind. She made her way around the gap left by the slide. Where was he? Then she knew-he lay on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Her heart pounding, she ran to the edge of the precipice, and as she stared into the chasm the mist thinned to reveal a rubble of stone and earth and she saw with horror a dark form on the beach. She screamed.

Lesley sat up in the dark room. Jon shifted restlessly beside her. With both hands she felt along the top of the blanket searching for the opal, then realized she had not taken the pendant from her jewel box. She had seen into the future without the opal. What did that mean? She trembled, gooseflesh rising on her arms and neck, so she drew up her legs and clasped her hands about her knees. Jon. The opal. The dream. Her thoughts whirled around and around and around until, at last, she slept.

Although the drapes were drawn when she awoke, Lesley could tell the morning was sunny. She looked at the empty bed beside her, then to the bathroom where she heard the shower running. The shower woke me up, Lesley thought. She threw back the blankets and stood up, stretching. She knew what she must do. Her moment of indecision when Craig asked her to return to San Diego told her she must act. Jon wouldn't or couldn't reveal the full truth; she must find out for herself.

Jon's pants lay draped over the back of the chair next to the bed. The keys. She reached into his right-hand pants pocket and brought out his key ring, cradling the keys in her palm as she glanced from the closed door of the bathroom toward the stairs. In her hand she held the answer to the locked room in the tower. She looked again at the bathroom door, listening to the steady rush of water. Making up her mind, she thrust her arms into the sleeves of a blue quilted robe and pushed her feet into moccasins.

Clutching the keys in her hand, she hurried to the hall, down the stairs, and across the kitchen to the pantry. The house was enveloped in the hush of early morning. She opened the outside door and stopped, surprised, a surprise which slowly turned to dismay. Snow covered the ground, the dock, and the beach; weighted the branches of the pines. Overnight a storm had come and gone-the sky was now blue-and left Iron Ridge quiet and softened.

If she crossed the unmarked snow to the tower she would leave telltale footprints on the path, prints she would have no time to sweep away. She turned and ran back to the kitchen and up the stairs. In the hall, the silence made her pause. The shower was no longer on. Breathlessly she opened the door to the bedroom.

"You're up." Jon, wearing only undershorts, faced her from in front of the chair over which his pants were laid. Lesley held the key ring behind her back.

"It snowed last night." Her words came tumbling out. "The ground, the trees, they're all covered with snow."

"I haven't seen a snowfall in years." He walked around the chair to the window and pulled open the drapes. "There must be at least two inches on the ground."

Lesley came toward him until she stood beside the chair. The pocket from which she had removed the keys a few minutes before gaped open.

Jon turned to her. "I'll get dressed and after breakfast we'll go out and see what animal tracks we can find. This first snow won't last; it will probably melt today." He looked down at her. "You're flushed. Is anything wrong?"

"I'm excited about the snow. My first real Michigan snowstorm." Her hand holding his keys was damp with perspiration. Jon reached past her for his pants.

"Jon," she said. "I couldn't find my shampoo last night."

"The shampoo? I saw the tube in the bathroom just now. On top of the sink."

"I looked before I went to bed. I couldn't find it."

"Come here, I'll show you." He opened the bathroom door, the pants momentarily forgotten. "Look," he said, "there's your shampoo right where I told you it was."

She slipped the keys into his pocket. "You're right," she said. "I don't know how I could have been so blind."

"This party is upsetting you, I'll be glad when it's over. Come on, let's eat."

When, after breakfast, she followed him across the snow toward the woods, she felt the sun warm her face.

Water dripped from icicles along the edge of the roof and bare patches of ground showed beneath the trees. Lesley looked at the virgin snow between the house and the tower. Before the end of another twenty-four hours, she told herself, I'll find out what Jon has hidden there.

Chapter Fifteen.

Not until the following evening, less than an hour before the housewarming was scheduled to begin, did Lesley find an opportunity to return to the tower room. She had dressed early and was standing in front of the mirror while Jon fastened the opal's golden chain around her neck.

"You look lovely tonight," he told her, his hands lingering on her bare upper arms. Her eyes met his in the mirror, then dropped to the fire opal on her breast. Except for her wedding band, she wore no other jewelry.

"I've always liked black," she said. Lesley knew her blonde hair, fair complexion, and bare arms made a striking contrast to the dark, high-necked dress.

"Will you check on the caterers?" Jon asked. "When I came upstairs they were starting to bring the food in from their truck. I'll be ready in half an hour, I still have to shave and shower."

"I'll go down in a minute." Lesley busied herself by pinning back her hair and putting on lipstick but as soon as Jon left the room she slipped the keys from his pocket and hurried to the stairs. On the lower floor she met a gray-haired woman, one of the two caterers.

"What a beautiful dress." The woman stopped in the kitchen doorway, a tray of sandwiches in her hands, blocking Lesley's path.

"Thank you. You're Roberta, aren't you?"

"Roberta Clary. I'll be serving the hors d'oeuvres. Christine, she's the dark Finnish girl, does the drinks, and then both of us will help with the buffet later. Your jewel, I never saw one like that before. I hope you don't mind my asking, but is it real?"

"This is an opal." Lesley held the pendant so the woman could see into the depths of the stone. "And yes, it's real. There aren't any artificial opals-they've never been able to duplicate one." Lesley glanced at the clock on the mantel in the living room. A few minutes after six; the first guests would arrive at any moment.

"I don't want to keep you," she said to Roberta. "I know you must have a lot to do."

"Yes, but I like catering these big doings. Gives me a chance to see the houses and the people, too." She nodded to the tray. "You do want these on the dining room table, don't you?"

"That will be fine." Lesley smiled, edged past Roberta, and walked through the kitchen and out of the house. Although the sun had set, an after-light still glowed over the lake. The ground was damp, but the only other reminders of the snowstorm were a few patches of white beneath the trees.

Lesley half ran to the tower. The door was locked. She tried one key after another, the air cold on her bare arms. The third key slipped into the lock, turned, and the door opened. Going directly to Jon's desk, she again tried the keys, unlocking the drawers with the last one on the ring. She sat in the chair in front of his desk. There was a single drawer in the middle, three on the left side, and one on the right.

She pulled out the middle drawer first and saw a scattering of pencils, a key, pens, erasers, a box of staples, and a staple remover. Nothing else. The large right-hand drawer rattled open. Empty. She searched the other side of the desk, finding typed pages of historical data in the top drawer, two books and several pamphlets on the history and geography of the Upper Peninsula in the next, nothing whatever in the bottom and final drawer.

Could Jon have told her the truth? Did he lock the tower room because of the value of his research materials? She shook her head, skeptical of his writing project, for he referred to it infrequently and when he did she found his interest perfunctory.

She glanced about the room. The phone still sat on the other chair. Jon had brought a bookcase from the attic but there was dust, not books, on its shelves. Next to the bookcase was the three-drawer filing cabinet. She crossed the room to the file and pulled the handle of the top drawer. Locked. She tried the keys in the lock b.u.t.ton at the top of the file. No, none of them fit.

The room had darkened and, unable to read the labels on the file drawers, Lesley went to the desk to light the lamp. She paused with her hand on the switch, looking back over her shoulder in the direction of the house. The windows of the tower room had no curtains. He'll be able to see the light, she thought, dropping her hand. Frowning, she tapped one of the larger keys from the key ring on the top of the desk.

A memory tugged at her and she pictured the contents of the middle desk drawer. What had she seen there? Pens, pencils, erasers, a key. Yes, a key. She reached into the drawer and, taking the key, walked to the file and thrust it into the lock. The key turned easily and the lock b.u.t.ton snapped out. The top two drawers were empty. In the bottom drawer she found a folder tied with brown cord. Undoing the bow, she looked inside at the thick sheaf of papers. She took the folder to the desk and slid the papers onto the desk top, being careful to keep them in the same order. In a few minutes the room would be too dark for her to read the typed sheets.