The Opal Legacy

by Fortune Kent

  “See what I mean?”

  “You would have behaved the same way.”

  “You’re wrong. I wouldn’t.” She began to fold the tablecloth and pick up the papers. He walked a short distance away and when she glanced up she saw him push aside the hanging branches of one of the willows.

  When she finished she closed the hamper and stood up. She walked toward the tree, the creek murmuring at her feet. She parted the willow fronds with both of her hands. Jon was leaning on the tree with one hand on the trunk, staring away from her.

  “Why did we quarrel?” she asked. He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” she told him “I don’t know why I got angry. Something seemed to come over me, something from inside I couldn’t control. Do you know what I mean?” She put her hand on his arm and he turned to her and she leaned her head on his chest. His arms went around her waist.

  “I shouldn’t have told you about the Indians. Not today. I wanted your first day at Iron Ridge to be perfect.”

  “In a way I’m glad you told me. I’m a Hollister now.”

  “There’s a strangeness about Iron Ridge I can’t explain. The Hollisters have always loved Iron Ridge and hated it at the same time. They’ve left, vowing never to return, staying away for years at a time, living in New York, in Europe, in Florida. Yet they always come back. ‘Like elephants coming home to die,’ Mary used to say.”

  Mary again. So much at Iron Ridge reminded him of his first wife. Why had she hated Iron Ridge? And had she really headed out into the lake knowing death waited for her there? Lesley started to speak, to ask him about Mary, then bit her lip. Not now. Not today.

  “It was my fault,” Jon said as though she had actually asked the question. “I should have been here when she took the boat. I should have known better than to leave her by herself after what happened…” His voice trailed off.

  Lesley looked up at him. Jon stared over her head and she turned in his arms but could see only the brown branches of the willow undulating in the breeze.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Not your fault at all.” She took his hand and pulled him down onto the moss-covered ground beside the trunk of the tree. She put her arm around his neck and kissed him, kissed his mouth, his eyes, and his neck, and he lay on his back and pulled her to him and, in the muted light beneath the willow, they made love in the early afternoon.

  Afterwards she looked up into the branches of the tree. It’s going to be all right between us, she told herself. Neither Mary nor Iron Ridge nor my dreams can spoil what we have. She looked tenderly at Jon dozing beside her, his eyes closed, his hair disheveled.

  She sat up, then stood to look about her, tingling with the sensation she was being watched. She walked to the trailing willow branches, drew them aside, holding them with one hand. The day had darkened and she felt cold. A man’s face seemed to appear amid the undergrowth on the edge of the clearing, a face with one eye half-closed, and she thought light glinted from his glasses. She shuddered, blinking, and when she looked again she saw only the shadowed woods. My imagination, she told herself.

  Dropping the veil of willow branches, she returned to sit beside Jon, clasping her hands about her knees. As long as I have you to depend on, she thought, I’ll be all right.

  Chapter Nine

  Two days later Lesley woke to find dark rain clouds scudding inland before a cold, steady wind off the lake. When, late in the morning, she walked to where Jon was nailing planks onto the side of the dock, large raindrops began to spatter her face. She tied a scarf over her hair and drew her jacket tight about her neck.

  “The storm’s almost here,” Jon said. “I won’t be able to finish the dock so I think I’ll go into town. I have to order some new storm windows. Do you want to come?”

  “Yes. I should get more lightbulbs, and coffee, and paint for the kitchen. I’ll bring a chip to match at the store. And—”

  “Make a list,” he told her.

  From the dock they watched three separate squalls slant from the clouds to the surface of the lake. The sky darkened above them, a veil of rain swept toward shore, and, with a rush, the storm roiled the water below the dock.

  “Run,” Jon shouted to her and she lowered her head and ran. As she pulled open the back door and stood gasping in the pantry, the squall reached the house and rain beat on the roof over their heads while water streamed across the windows.

  Lesley undid her scarf and shook out her hair, laughing. She could no longer see the lake through the rain. Jon took off his jacket, hung it from a hook on the wall, and walked ahead of her into the house, turning on the lights as he went. She waited in the living room, watching the storm, and she stared when he came up behind her and buried his face in the hair on the back of her neck.

  “A reward for you,” he said, kissing her. “The house looks great.” His voice was muffled by her hair. He kept his arms around her waist, holding her tightly against him. “The rooms don’t have that museum look any more. They actually seem lived in.”

  “All I did was hang brighter drapes and add a few lamps and throw rugs. If I had a sewing machine I’d make slipcovers for some of these chairs.”

  “We’ll look for a sewing machine in Marquette.”

  “I’m not going to let Iron Ridge get the better of me no matter how hard it tries.”

  “You talk as though the house was alive.”

  “I think of it that way. Not alive the way a person is alive; more like a force. And an unfriendly force; at least toward me.”

  “Mary used to say Iron Ridge was malevolent.”

  Mary again. Lesley turned to face him, backing away. “Jon, don’t misunderstand what I’m going to say. You lived here with Mary for a long time and I know the house must remind you of her. Yet I become—well, I become upset when you mention her so often.”

  “Have I been talking a lot about Mary? You’re right; I guess I have without realizing what I was doing. I thought I could come back to Iron Ridge, and the past, my living here before, would be over and done with. And it is, for the most part, yet once in a while it comes back like a dream. No, dream’s the wrong word. More like a nightmare.”

  We both live with nightmares from the past, Lesley thought. Enough of Mary—the future’s more important than the past. She put her hand on his cheek and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

  “There’s one more thing these rooms need,” she told him.

  “Not another lamp. You’ve already put two new lamps in this room alone.”

  “No, not another lamp. The rooms need people. Here we are with this huge house and there’s only the two of us.”

  “You don’t mean you want to have a—”

  “Party.” She finished the sentence for him. “Let’s give a party. Not right away but maybe next month, in December, early in the month before everyone’s busy because of the holidays. We can invite people from Marquette, have a real housewarming.”

  Jon walked to the window. The rain had slackened and Lesley, coming to stand behind him, saw gray clouds sweeping in from the lake.

  “I don’t know many people here after all this time,” Jon said. “Remember it’s been ten years since I lived at Iron Ridge.”

  “We could invite your lawyer, Mr. Bennett, and the people who helped keep the house up while you were in California, and the summer people from the cabins along the shore if they’re still here and—”

  “Oh, we could find enough people to invite. And they’ll come, never fear. Just like after a death they’d go to the estate auction. Not so much to look for bargains as to be able to rummage through his possessions. They’re like ghouls.”

  “You’re exaggerating. We’re all curious about how others live. But can we? Have a party, I mean. It wouldn’t be much trouble; we can have the food catered.”

  He turned and leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. “Of course we can. You su
rprised me; I suppose that’s why I hesitated. I don’t associate festivities of any kind with Iron Ridge. But we’ll throw the biggest party Marquette has seen in years. Why don’t you start by making a—”

  “List,” she finished the sentence for him. “I will and tomorrow we can start deciding who to ask.”

  “While we’re talking of annoyances, I’ll mention one of yours. It’s not important, though when you do it I have to grit my teeth.”

  “Oh? What do I do?”

  “You’re probably not even aware of it any more, It’s become such a—”

  “Habit?”

  “Yes. And that’s what you do. You finish my sentences for me as though you can’t wait, as if you think I’m too slow.”

  “Never again,” she promised, walking with him to the car.

  In Marquette, Lesley shopped in a large discount store while Jon drove to the bank. As she walked toward the front door with her packages, she remembered she had wanted to buy paint. She turned abruptly.

  The man came toward her along an aisle, his hat pulled down on his forehead. Beneath the hat she saw the eye squinting at her, not like a perpetual wink, she thought, more like someone aiming a gun. He hurried past and out of the store where she lost sight of him in the crowd on the sidewalk.

  “I saw someone I recognized in town,” she told Jon as they drove back to Iron Ridge.

  He looked questioningly at her.

  “The man with the disfigured eye. The one I saw you talking to in Mexico.”

  She heard Jon’s sudden intake of breath. “In Mexico?”

  “In the restaurant in Tijuana.”

  “Randall.” The surprise in the way he said the name seemed genuine. “I didn’t know he was in Michigan. His name’s Charles Randall. He’s someone I’ve had business dealings with.”

  “I had the feeling he’d been watching me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like him. He frightens me.”

  “Iron Ridge is beginning to get on your nerves.”

  No, she thought, it’s not Iron Ridge. She wasn’t afraid of the past, there was something else, something involving herself and Jon and this man Charles Randall. And the opal. She closed her eyes, picturing the gem, and when she opened them again they were at the house and she saw a telephone company truck parked near the garage.

  “I forgot the installer was coming today,” Jon said. “I think we should have three phones, one in the bedroom, one for you in the kitchen, and I’d like a phone in my office in the tower. I’ll get a separate number so you won’t have to be bothered by the ringing in the house.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d be using your office that much.”

  “I probably won’t but it’s best to be prepared. I’ll tell the installer.” Jon parked in the driveway. “The housewarming,” he said, his hand on the door. “The more I think about it, the better your idea sounds. The party will give you something to look forward to; you must be lonely out here with just me around all day.”

  “No, I like there being just the two of us. But a party will be fun and I’ll have a chance to meet your old friends.”

  “And enemies. The Hollisters and their neighbors have never been especially close. I suppose because our family kept to themselves we’ve been resented or, if not resented, just ignored. And after what happened ten years ago…”

  “You don’t have to avoid mentioning Mary altogether. I just didn’t want to hear about her all the time.”

  “After Mary died there was a lot of talk in Marquette. Why did she go out on the lake alone? That sort of thing. You can’t blame people, I suppose.” He started to walk to the telephone truck, then glanced back at her. “Are the three phones all right?”

  “Whatever you decide.”

  She went into the house to the library where she stood in the doorway, her thumb and forefinger on her chin as she examined the room—rows and rows of books, dark pine paneling, brown leather chairs, mahogany tables, and a globe set in a pedestal. She heard a groan and raised her head, listening, and once again, from some distant part of the house, came a creaking sound as the house settled. Yes, she thought, Iron Ridge was almost alive. But not evil. She grimaced, reminded in spite of herself of Mary.

  Deliberately, she put aside the thought of Mary, pictured Jon Instead, his strength softened by tenderness, his mottled brown eyes, the way his hair curled above his ears and at the back of his bead. Again she felt his arms around her and tingled as she remembered the afternoon beneath the willow in the meadow.

  Smiling to herself, she paused in front of the rows of books—mining texts, leather-bound novels, histories of Michigan and the Upper Peninsula: Call It North Country; sets of nineteenth-century English authors: Scott, Dickens, Eliot; early American writers: Poe, Irving, Hawthorne. And there, on a shelf so low she had to stoop to read the titles, she found boys’ books: Treasure Island, Tom Swift, Baseball Joe, sports stories, and tales of adventure and war.

  She pulled Treasure Island from the shelf, blew dust from the top, and as she leafed through the pages she imagined a young Jon Hollister sprawled on a rug in front of the fire reading of the voyage to a distant island. She saw Great Expectations at the far end of the shelf, one of her favorites since she had received a copy at a Christmas party when she was in the eighth grade. She took out the book and opened the cover.

  “For Jon on his twelfth birthday,” the faded black script read. Was the signature “Uncle Knox”? The date followed, December 29, and the year.

  She laid the book on the table, intending to ask Jon if he remembered receiving it, and started toward the kitchen to fix supper. Suddenly she paused, looked back to the table where the book lay, its black cover lettered in gold. She returned to study the inscription again, shaking her head. I’ll ask him, she decided.

  Light shone from the window of Jon’s office on the first floor of the tower. Glancing inside, Lesley saw Jon talking on the newly installed phone. She tried the door. Locked. She stepped back, surprised, waited a moment, then knocked.

  “I didn’t know I‘d locked the door.” Jon stood in the doorway. When she looked past him she couldn’t see the phone.

  “I’m starved,” Jon said.

  “Oh, I forgot. I meant to put steaks in the oven fifteen minutes ago.”

  Not until much later did she remember the book. They were in the living room, Lesley working the crossword puzzle in the Marquette paper while Jon stood at one of the windows staring out into the black night Lesley saw the room reflected in the. windowpanes, the soft yellow glow of the lamps, the flames dancing in the fireplace.

  “You were born in March, weren’t you?” she asked. “Not in December.”

  “Yes, in March. On the twenty-ninth.’

  “I thought so. When you first told me that night in Tijuana I wrote the date next to your name in my address book.”

  “Why do you ask? What gave you the idea I might have been born in December?”

  “I found a book in the library this morning. Great Expectations. A present from your uncle on your twelfth birthday. Yet the inscription on the flyleaf was dated in December, not March.”

  “You have me mixed up with another Jon, my cousin.” He spoke slowly. “My grandfather was a domineering man.” He turned to face her, a smile on his face. A wary smile, she thought. “Both of my grandfather’s children named their boys after him. Jon’s my first name and my cousin’s middle name.”

  “You never told me you had a cousin.”

  “It never seemed important. He lives somewhere in Canada now. I haven’t heard from him in years.”

  “Oh,” she said. Suddenly she remembered his ring, a turquoise for December. She looked at his hand but the ring was no longer on his finger.

  He turned to the window and in the reflection she thought she saw his smile fade.
Two grandsons named Jon, she thought. Probably different branches of many families used the same or similar names, so his explanation was logical. Then why did she feel the same apprehension she had known in her dream when the cliff face slid away and she had stared down into a chasm? She knew the reason. No matter how much she might deny it to herself, she didn’t believe Jon. He was lying about his birthday. Yet for what possible reason?

  Tired and uneasy, Lesley left the living room before nine o’clock to go to bed.

  “I’ll be up soon,” Jon told her. He stood thrusting at the logs in the fire with a poker. “I’m going to walk along the lake.” Since coming to Iron Ridge he had made a habit of late evening walks.

  When Lesley was halfway up the stairs she heard the outside door shut behind him. She walked into their bedroom where she picked up and fondled the carving of the Mexican girl; yet she found no reassurance. Still restless, she put the carving down, pulled open the bureau drawer and brought out her jewel box, untouched since her arrival at Iron Ridge. She wanted to look into the depths of the opal, wondering if she could find comfort there. Placing the box on the dresser, she lifted the lid. The box was empty, the opal gone.

  Chapter Ten

  Frantically she turned the jewel box upside down, then opened the bottom compartment to search inside. The opal was gone. She laid the box on the bureau and lifted clothes from the bureau drawer and shook them out, one by one, in the hope that somehow the stone had fallen from the box. She found nothing.

  Lesley paced to the window, back to the bureau, to the window again, to the bureau. The opal is gone—the words repeated over and over in her mind as panic rose in her. At last she sat in her rocker with the jewel box open on her lap, her hands gripping the knobs on the ends of the chair arms, her heart beating uncontrollably.

  The opal, the prized possession of the Campbell family for more than two hundred years, had been entrusted to her and she had lost it. When had she last seen her birthstone? Not since before coming to Iron Ridge; the last time had been in California just before she packed the jewel box in her suitcase.