“Can we come in for a minute?” Holly asked.
“Oh!” Lexi stepped back, opening the door farther. This was completely weird, but she was willing to go with it. “Yes, sure, come on in.”
“Thanks,” Holly said, and tossed a look at Nicola, as if urging her on.
Lexi led them into the front room—they referred to it as the living room, though it had only one chair and one love seat. The walls were a plain antique white, and until the house sold, Lexi thought they were in desperate need of some paintings. She’d even brought in the ones she’d inherited from her grandmother, but they were still sitting on the floor, leaning against the chair rail because she decided they weren’t actually good enough to put on the wall.
They all sat, and after about half a second of awkward silence, Nicola spoke. “This is really awkward. For all of us. In fact, you might hate us when you hear what we have to say, and we don’t blame you, but we just had to come back and do the right thing—”
“What she means,” Holly interrupted, “is that twenty years ago we wronged you and we’re here to make it right.”
It was a good thing Holly had spoken, because Nicola had really kind of freaked Lexi out. “What are you talking about?” she asked, assuming anything that happened twenty years ago had to have happened at camp, and what could these two former mice have done to warrant her hating them now? “Are you here to give me a Three Musketeers bar because you didn’t share back then?” She was immediately sorry for saying it. What if that was what it was about in some way? Maybe they were here trying to complete some sort of twelve-step program, and she’d just made fun of them.
“What?” Holly looked stunned. “No. We’re . . . no.” She frowned. “Did you actually care about that stuff back then?”
“Oh, it was just—” Lexi waved it away. This was their deal, not hers. “I was jealous, that’s all. Everyone seemed to get stuff from home, even horrible people, except me. I was jealous of everyone.” She gave a short laugh. This was awkward. Why the hell were they here? And when were they going to leave?
Holly nudged Nicola and gave her an I told you so look.
“Okay, you guys are going to have to tell me what you’re up to,” Lexi said. “Because you’re sort of freaking me out.”
Nicola spoke in a reassuring tone. “Listen, I know this seems really out of place, and it probably is. We all know people in our past that we could have treated better, and we all know people in our past who should have treated us better. Life is just one big mess that way. But when Holly ran into you at the mall and saw that you were in trouble—”
“I didn’t see that,” Holly interjected. “You told me, straight up. It’s not like you looked destitute or anything.”
Lexi nodded and went rigid. No. No way. “Please tell me you’re not here to give me some sort of charity.”
“No, not at all!” Holly said, so effusively that it almost made Lexi laugh.
“We’re here to give you this.” Nicola took something out of her pocket and handed it to Lexi, pressing it into her hand.
“I thought we were going to lead up to that,” Holly said in a stage whisper. “Tell our side first.”
“We were sucking at that. She just needs to have it.” Nicola returned her gaze to Lexi and gave an apologetic shrug.
Lexi almost laughed at their cartoonish exchange, until she looked at the thing Nicola had put in her hand.
She shouldn’t even have had to look.
She knew instinctively what it was, just from the feel of it, the cool metal, gliding like water into her hand. She’d held it so many times in her childhood that she could never forget.
“You found it,” she breathed, looking down at the gleaming piece of gold and rock in her hand.
“Yeah.” Holly cleared her throat. “So, I know it’s been a while—”
“Where did you find it?” Lexi’s hand began to shake. She looked at them with tear-filled eyes. “It was my mother’s.” She looked down at it again and said, more to herself, “Finally.” She sniffed, and Holly noticed a tear drop onto her jeans. “I can’t believe it.” She closed her hand around it and held it close to her heart.
It would have been easier if she’d just yelled at Holly and Nicola and kicked them out.
Now they had to watch this painfully poignant scene in silence and wait for whatever tonic chord Lexi was going to play to end it.
“Where did you find it?” Lexi asked, her voice just barely more than a whisper. “How did you know to bring it to me?” She looked back at it, then dangled it on the chain and looked at it in the light. Her laughter was sudden and startling. “My God, it looks like new!”
“It was exactly like you had it,” Nicola said carefully.
Lexi looked at them and swiped tears from her cheeks. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m a total weirdo, crying over this, but it symbolizes so much. . . .” She unclasped the chain and pulled the ring off, then set it aside, still clutching the chain.
“Tell me, really,” Lexi said, “how did you find it?”
There was a moment of silence.
“See, that’s where the whole thing about you hating us comes in,” Holly explained, eyeing the ring Lexi had set on the table. She was absolutely mortified to have to fess up to this, particularly on the heels of this scene. “We . . . took it from you.”
“It was only supposed to be a prank,” Nicola added quickly, but to Holly’s ears, it didn’t soften the blow. “For one night. But we got caught and everything got confused.”
“You took it?” Lexi frowned, apparently uncomprehending. “When? How?”
“We took it off your bedpost while you were sleeping one night in the cabin. We only wanted to hide it for a day, but they caught us going back for it and wouldn’t let us.”
“But why?” Lexi asked, looking completely earnest. “Why would you do that?”
“Well, we were thirteen at the time,” Nicola said. “So our reasons were stupid like only a thirteen-year-old’s can be, but”—she shrugged, embarrassed—“you were really mean to us and we wanted to get back at you.”
“We thought we’d be able to just take it for one night and put it back the next one, like Nicola was saying,” Holly said quickly, not wanting that point to get lost in this. “But Mr. Frank and all the counselors got involved, and when we tried to go back and get it the next night, they stopped us. And”—tears made her eyes gleam—“we were afraid to tell you, or anyone else, the truth.”
“It was and is totally wrong,” Nicola said plainly. “And you’re probably really mad that we took this from you and it was missing for so long, and we don’t blame you one bit. But after Holly saw you and you told her about your situation, we remembered the ring and thought maybe it would help.”
“And we hope it does,” Holly added eagerly. “Really.”
Lexi looked from one to the other of them.
They waited, bracing themselves for the worst reaction.
But Lexi was strangely calm. It was like a peace had come over her when she took the ring into her hand. “Wow,” she said. “Not a lot of people would do that.”
“Steal, keep it secret for years, or bring it back?” Holly asked.
Lexi laughed. This was all too weird. “Um. I guess all of the above. I wish you’d let me know somehow before now, but then . . .” She looked thoughtful and then shrugged. “I probably would have wanted to go look for it, and there’s no way I could have found it.”
“We couldn’t get back, either,” Holly said. “And Mr. Frank told us that he was putting up electrical fences along the border, which, now that I think about it, was probably a big fat lie, but it just made it sound like, no matter what we did, we couldn’t make this right.”
“And we were scared to death to tell you the truth,” Nicola said. “We hope you’ll forgive us, but neither of us blames you if you can’t. More than that, we hope it helps you out, we really do.”
Lexi didn’t speak, but her expression spoke
volumes.
“Honestly, we would have said something back then if we’d thought it was real, but it was so big and so elaborate that we had no idea it might be real,” Nicola said earnestly. “Neither of us ever saw anything like it in real life before.”
“The ring?” Lexi asked, then gave a dry laugh. “Oh, yeah, the ring was magnificent. The real one, I mean.” She shook her head. “Not this one. It’s just a copy.”
They both looked at her, mute.
“What do you mean?” Holly asked at last.
“Isn’t that real?” Nicola followed up.
“That?” Lexi glanced at the ring. Even from a distance of several feet, it was obvious to her now in a way that it wasn’t when she was a child. Of course, she had a lot of other information now, too, about how Michelle had siphoned money out of the marriage via a veritable pipeline of jewelry replacement and sales. “It’s a really good knockoff of the real thing,” she said. “But it’s a fake.”
23
“It’s a fake?” Holly asked.
Lexi nodded. “It was the chain I was upset about losing.” She could tell from the expressions on their faces that this was surprising news. “It was my mother’s. She wore it every single day.” Every day it had touched her skin, separated by mere millimeters from her heart. This one small gleaming rope of metal that even Michelle couldn’t be bothered with meant more to Lexi than anything. She’d been anguished at losing it.
It couldn’t have mattered more if it were worth millions, for all the love she’d burned into it, all the secrets it had absorbed. She almost felt that if she looked in its shining links, she’d see her adolescence play out on them. Her thoughts and hopes and dreams, everything she’d concentrated on while wearing it or holding it, frozen in the gleam of metal.
“I thought the ring was real at the time,” Lexi explained. “Obviously I can see why you remembered it as something potentially big. But I learned a couple of years ago that my father’s wife had decoys made of all her jewelry, so she could sell it if and when she pleased. She probably sold the real ring that this is copied from months before I ever took this.”
Holly raised her hand to her mouth. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, I’m very sure.” Lexi looked again at the ring and then held up the chain. “But this means the world to me. It has so much sentimental value for me. Maybe even more, now that your story is attached to it. I can’t believe the two of you took so much trouble to come back all these years later.”
“You have no idea,” Nicola said with a laugh. “We’ve spent the last day trampling around in the woods looking for it, climbing trees, getting injured”—she raised her wrist—“and then trying to work up the courage to come bring it to you and admit what we’d done.”
“I’m not sure I could have done that,” Lexi said. Actually, she doubted she would. “And I can assure you I know people who have yet to admit what they’ve done.” She fastened the chain around her neck. It was warm from her hand and felt like the touch of an old friend.
“But are you sure the ring is a fake?” Holly asked.
Lexi nodded. “Absolutely. Even the family jeweler admitted he’d done it, though he contended he made the copies ‘for insurance purposes.’ ”
Holly looked disappointed. “I’m really sorry. Not only for making you so upset all those years ago, but mostly because we weren’t able to help you now. I really thought this would be a huge help to you.”
“It is!” Lexi said, and meant it. For these two girls, now women, whom she’d been so jealous of during her formative years, to come back and fess up to something that could have gotten them into a lot of trouble was really remarkable. “You’ve brought closure to one of the biggest mistakes I ever made, taking the necklace to camp and then losing it. It was awful.”
It was clear the two before her had hoped to be giving her something that would save her financially, like one of those great big cardboard checks from Publishers Clearing House that would solve all the problems of her life.
“We’re sincerely so sorry,” Nicola said, standing up. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”
Holly joined her in standing. “If there’s anything we could do to make it up to you. Ever. Anything.”
Lexi waved that off. “It’s water under the bridge. I’m just so glad to have it now.” She smiled. “I can’t tell you”—her voice faltered—“what it means to have it back.”
“Remember, if there’s anything we can do,” Nicola said, shrugging her slinged arm. “To help in any way. Right, Holly?”
But Holly didn’t answer. She was staring at one of Lexi’s grandmother’s old paintings. “What is that?” she asked.
“Holly!” Nicola said in an urgent whisper.
“Ugh, I know,” Lexi said. She should have put them away. They looked ghastly. “I know it’s a mess. It’s just something I inherited from my grandmother.”
Holly moved toward it as if being drawn by some unseen force. “But it’s . . . I mean, I think . . .” She moved closer. “Is this a Patronienne Jordan?”
“I don’t think—” Lexi stopped. She had no idea who’d painted it, and the thing was such a grimy mess that there was no way to see a signature. But she remembered a name from long ago. “Would that be Patti Jordan?”
Holly laughed. “It would if this is an original.”
It was strange how the name had come to her out of the blue like that. She hadn’t thought of it for years. Decades. “All I know is the paintings were done by a friend of my grandmother’s. I think the name was Patti Jordan, and about all I remember about her is that we went to her house on the James River down in Smithfield when she was sick. Dying of cancer, I think. I was really young, but it was freaky enough that I remember her name.”
“She died in 1977,” Holly said, looking from Lexi to the painting. “Do you have any more?”
“I have four,” Lexi said. She was still holding the ring fast in her hand. It was crazy, but she felt like it gave her luck.
Holly gasped and put a hand to her chest. “Are you serious? Can I see them? Not that I’d blame you if you said no, but I’d love to check them out.”
“Well . . . yes.” She exchanged a quizzical look with Nicola and led them to the other three paintings.
“I don’t know if you’d want to part with these,” Holly said after a preliminary look over them. “After all, I realize they were your grandmother’s. But, Lexi, I have to tell you, if these are what I think they are, they’re worth a fortune.”
Lexi’s eyes widened. This was not the kind of news she thought she’d get. Ever again. “A fortune?”
Holly nodded. “Yeah.” She glanced at Nicola, then back at Lexi. “Millions.”
“So let me get this straight,” Greg said, popping the top off a bottle of beer. “You can buy and sell me now, but you’ve decided, instead, to stick around to work on houses?”
Lexi, who had just gotten an official—and very high—appraisal on her inherited paintings, laughed. “Of course! As I see it, I can retire from my glamorous career in wall painting and spackling, but I prefer to stay productive.”
“Here?” He held the beer out to her. “With me?”
She took it and gave a nod. “Here with you.”
He scrutinized her. “Are you sure this can make you happy?”
The question was so absurd, she almost laughed. “What are you talking about?”
He sighed. “Look, I know where you came from, the kind of lifestyle and environment you came from.” He gave a quick self-effacing smile. “I’ve spent weeks dismantling it. When you moved in here, it was because you needed a place, but now you have all the choices in the world.”
“All the choices in the world?” she asked, moving toward him.
He nodded. “Looks that way.”
“So I can pick and choose whatever I want, according to you.” It was an easy choice. After an unsatisfying lifetime of cruising on credit cards and enjoying whatever she wanted, she�
��d found her bliss in work and in the man who’d shown her how to do it. She wasn’t stupid enough to give the money from the paintings away, of course, but she was smart enough to realize that she had more fun being productive than she did being coddled.
His grin was so sexy. “Just about anything.”
“Any house, any car?” She blinked. “Any man?”
“Oh, Blondie, I’d bet money on that.”
“In that case, Mr. McKenzie,” she draped her arms around his neck and smiled as she felt his warm hands on her lower back, “I choose you.”
24
They were calling it “the comeback of the year”—Nicola Kestle was going to star in a movie biopic of Ann Radcliffe, directed by none other than Wynton S. Balademas, whose film version last year of the monk’s story from The Canterbury Tales had won him huge critical acclaim, three People’s Choice Awards, and two Oscars.
No sooner had Nicola’s casting been announced in The Hollywood Reporter than Oscar buzz began about her.
“I was so lucky to get her,” Balademas was quoted in the article as saying. “I’ve had this project on the back burner for a long time, and it was just sheer luck that I was flipping channels in a hotel room and came across an old movie of Nicola’s. It was then that I knew I had found my Ann Radcliffe.”
The movie everyone would think he meant was Duet, but Wynton had told her that it was, in fact, The Black of Night.
It was ironic, since that was her first movie and she spent most of it in the shadows and darting behind trees and buildings to get away from a serial killer. It wasn’t her face that had captivated Wynton so much—he could barely see it—but the way she carried herself, the way she moved, the very awkwardness of her height and gait.
Knowing this made the victory of getting the part that much sweeter.
“Who is Ann Radcliffe?” was Holly’s first question.
“She was a writer in the 1700s. She wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is generally acknowledged to be the first Gothic novel.”
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