The Opal Legacy

by Fortune Kent

  She had thought the opal’s spell over her had weakened and that her love for Jon and their marriage would enable her to relegate the gem to a proper place in her life—as a treasured ornament, an heirloom prized for its strange beauty. She had even tried to find a substitute, she realized as she glanced at the wooden carving of the Mexican girl staring forlornly from the nightstand.

  Now she knew she had been mistaken; the strange power of the opal remained unbroken.

  What had her great-grandmother said? October’s child must love and be loved in return before she can find happiness. I do love Jon, she assured herself. And does he love you in return? another part of her asked. Does he? “Yes,” she whispered, “yes, yes, yes.” Then why must I try so hard to convince myself?

  Who other than Jon could have taken the opal? She had found nothing else missing, neither the money in the top drawer nor Jon’s billfold lying on his dresser. Could he have merely changed the opal’s hiding place? No, he wouldn’t do that without telling her. She stood and placed the still-open jewel box on the bureau.

  I must know, she told herself. She would find Jon, confront him with her suspicions. Without the opal she was unprotected—alone—and though she feared the dreams the stone seemed to bring, without the gem she knew overwhelming emptiness and fear.

  Lesley pulled a sweater over her head as she ran down the stairs to the lower level of the house. In the dark living room the fire still glowed a dull red. The kitchen light was on, but the room was empty. She pressed the switch just inside the back door and in the circle of the outside light saw a deserted path leading to the dock, another branching toward the garage.

  “Jon, Jon!” she called while she hurried along the stone walk to the dock, the wind from the lake cutting into her face. There was no answer. Waves lapped on the pilings beneath her and, overhead, the moon flitted in and out of the clouds.

  The day before, when Jon had left the house to walk alone, Lesley, idly curious, had watched from the bedroom window. He had entered the tower room and later, while she peeled potatoes in the kitchen, she had noticed him stride north along the beach in the same direction they had gone on that Indian summer afternoon that now seemed so long ago.

  Lesley walked first to the tower. With the light from the house reflecting from the round window, the high structure seemed to stare down impassively at her. The railing of the widow’s walk was a black outline against the sky. The door would not open. She remembered leaving the door unlocked when they had left Jon’s office before supper. She turned the knob again. No, the door was locked. She rapped on the wood paneling once, twice, but heard no reply. The beach, she decided. He must have walked along the beach.

  Returning to the dock, she left the path and made her way cautiously down a steep incline to the sand. The waves from the lake swelled higher than she had ever seen them before and water foamed up the beach toward her. The night darkened as the moon slid behind clouds.

  She headed away from the house, pausing occasionally to call Jon’s name, but her voice seemed to be swept away by the wind. She stopped, peering into the night and, as she had before in the meadow, felt eyes on her. Just my imagination, she told herself. There’s no one here, the nearest house is miles away. Unless…

  Could whoever had stolen the opal still be at Iron Ridge? No, the opal was lost, not stolen. Why, only Jon and she knew she had the opal with her, let alone knew the gem’s hiding place. Only Jon and she. Lesley drew in her breath. Hadn’t Jon wondered whether the power of the opal would work for someone else? Could he be trying to find out?

  She tried to ignore the prickling at the back of her neck. Was someone following her? The man with the partly closed eye? She swung about but the beach behind her was empty and she saw only the dark bulk of the house rising over the lake. Turning, she walked forward again, the forest creeping toward the water until she was beneath the branches of the pines and had to walk slowly to avoid exposed roots. A few hundred feet in front of her a black land mass rose to her left telling her she neared the foot of the promontory.

  Each time the sound of the waves diminished for a few moments she paused to listen, and once she thought she heard the murmur of conversation, but when she held without moving she heard only the drip of water on leaves in the woods and the soughing of the wind in the branches of the trees. Someone’s waiting for me, she warned herself, waiting for me in the shadow of the pines. Shaking her head to dismiss her fears, she walked ahead faster than before.

  A hand grasped her arm. The moon reappeared and Lesley, stifling a scream, looked into a man’s face. Jon.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “You’re hurting me.” He released her and she backed away, rubbing her forearm with the fingers of her other hand. “The opal,” she said. “The opal is missing.”

  “We’ll go back to the house.” He took her arm, gently this time, and started along the beach.

  “Do you know where the opal is?” she asked.

  “Just follow me,” he said, releasing her and striding ahead. She hesitated, glancing behind her. Had she seen a movement in the shadows where Jon had waited? She couldn’t be sure. Looking after him, she saw Jon disappearing into the darkness and ran to catch up.

  He said nothing on the walk to the house. When they came to the dock he climbed to the path, then stopped and turned to reach down, holding his hand to her. She grasped his fingers and let him pull her up the incline.

  “You shouldn’t wander about at night,” he said. “As long as you stay on the beach you can find your way back, but once you’re out of sight of the lake it’s easy to get lost.”

  He led her not to the house, as she had expected, but to the tower. Reaching into his pocket for a key ring he unlocked the door and turned on the light. The only furnishings of the large room were an old desk against the far wall, three chairs, and a metal file cabinet. The phone, she now saw, sat behind the desk on one of the chairs. With a second key, Jon opened the desk drawer.

  “Sit down,” he told Lesley, looking at her over his shoulder. She sat on one of the straight-backed chairs. “Close your eyes,” he said, his voice softening.

  Sensing him approach from behind, she drew in her breath, her eyes shut tight. His fingers brushed against her hair and then she felt a weight on the front of her sweater as his hands fumbled at the back of her neck.

  “You can open your eyes now,” he said. She let out her breath in a gasp when she looked down. Shimmers of red and orange flashed from the opal held in a pendant of filigree gold. A thin chain circled her neck.

  “My wedding present to you.”

  She held the pendant in her open palm. The stone had never looked lovelier or more alive.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she said.

  “The poem gave me the Idea. You remember, ‘But lay an opal on her breast, and hope will lull those woes to rest.’ I wanted to surprise you right after we came to Iron Ridge but the jeweler in Marquette didn’t have the pendant ready until today. I intended giving it to you tomorrow morning.”

  She was thankful he stood behind her so he couldn’t see her face redden. How could she have suspected him of taking the opal? I’ll make it up to him, she promised herself. I won’t doubt him again.

  “Perhaps I should have told you,” he said, “but you didn’t pay any attention to your jewel box after we left California and I thought there’d be time to have the pendant made before you suspected. And you know I like to surprise you.”

  “How could I forget?” She smiled as she remembered his proposal of marriage.

  “Do you like the pendant? I can have the setting changed if you don’t.”

  “I love it just as it is; I’ve never seen the opal looking so brilliant before. I’m ashamed of myself, the way I ran after you on the beach tonight, but I was terribly upset when I thought I’d lost the opal.” She stood, putting her arms aroun
d his neck and when she kissed him she felt the pendant press against her breast. He bent down, keeping one hand on her back, putting the other beneath her knees, and lifted her into his arms.

  He carried her from the tower room into the house and up the stairs to their bedroom. Pushing the door closed with his foot, he carried her across the room and held her over the bed.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she said, smiling up at him.

  He dropped her onto the bed. Turning away, he unbuttoned his jacket, tossed it onto a chair, and came to stare down at her, his brown eyes glistening. She raised herself on her elbows. “You wouldn’t dare,” she whispered.

  A few minutes later she discovered that he would.

  She woke late in the night and reached past Jon, who slept heavily beside her, to take the opal from the nightstand. With the gem in her hand, she stared for a long time at the moonlight glowing on the windows, and then her mind closed and she was walking along a busy street. Snow fell in a straggling flurry, the large flakes melting as they struck the sidewalk. Ahead of her the flag above the post office snapped in the wind. Yes, she thought as she looked up, the flag still flew at full staff.

  Pushing open the door, she entered the lobby and waited at the end of a line at the counter. A stooped old man, leaning on a cane, came to stand behind her. “Did you hear the news, young lady?” he asked Lesley. “He’s out of danger. The president is going to live.” She felt a surge of relief.

  “I’m so glad,” she said.

  “Thank God,” murmured one of the women in the line ahead of her. Then the lobby faded and once more Lesley lay staring at the moonlight while beside her Jon groaned as he turned in his sleep.

  After breakfast the next morning she lingered over her coffee. Jon, sitting across the kitchen table from her, read the paper from the day before.

  “What does that story say?” she asked him. “The one about the president.”

  He turned the paper so he could read the news item. “He’s been admitted to Walter Reed Army Hospital. For routine tests, the White House announcement says.” She remembered the president had heart disease as the result of having rheumatic fever when he was a child.

  Lesley looked from the window at the overcast sky. “When will we have the first snow?” she asked. Jon folded the paper and laid it on the table.

  “Any day now. We usually have flurries before Thanksgiving.”

  Later, after Jon went to his office, Lesley walked on the beach near the house. The wind was cold, whitecaps spotted the gray lake, while overhead clouds hung low and heavy. She should tell Craig Ritter about her dream, she thought, then remembered her contrition and joy the night before when Jon gave her the pendant.

  I won’t have anything more to do with the institute, she told herself. I never should have told them about my dreams in the first place, never sent them my address. Jon had been right about them, but, right or wrong, she had been disloyal to him. She would make amends, undo the harm without Jon knowing. She walked purposefully to the house and up the stairs to their bedroom where, lowering the top of the rosewood desk, she tore a sheet of paper from a tablet.

  “Dear Mr. Ritter,” she wrote. “In a few weeks, probably at the end of November or the beginning of December, the president will become ill and for a time his life will be in danger. And then he will become worse and he will die.”

  She signed her name and folded the letter. So much for Craig Ritter and the institute. They would never be interested in her after her prediction proved to be categorically wrong.

  Lesley started to address the envelope, then paused. Jon had asked her to put letters on the living room mantel so he could take them to their box on the highway or into town. She didn’t want him to know she was writing the institute, yet when would she have a chance to mail the letter herself? I know what I’ll do, she thought. She scribbled a note, then inserted note and letter in a large envelope addressed to Lucy Douglas in San Diego.

  With a sigh of relief she placed the letter on the mantel. Now I’ve broken my last link with the past, she told herself. The wind rattled an attic shutter and from somewhere in the house she thought she heard the sound of muffled laughter.

  Chapter Eleven

  On Monday of the following week, Lesley woke first, dressed, and stood at the full-length mirror in the bedroom. She fastened the pendant about her neck, glancing from the warmth of the stone to its flashing reflection.

  “I love my pendant,” she said, seeing Jon sit up in bed to watch her.

  “The jeweler told me yours was the largest opal he’s worked with in the twenty years he’s been in business. Have you ever had the stone appraised?”

  “Never. The opal’s an heirloom. It’s been in our family since the eighteenth century.”

  “Yet wouldn’t you be interested in knowing what it’s worth? How much would you guess?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe five thousand dollars.” She shook her head. What did the price matter?

  “The jeweler showed me a smaller fire opal, one not nearly as brilliant, priced at more than ten thousand.”

  “I’m surprised. But my family never thought of the opal as being worth a certain amount of money.” She turned from the mirror and came to sit on a chair next to the bed where Jon leaned back with hands clasped behind his head. He doesn’t understand, she thought.

  “To me,” Lesley told him, “the passing of the opal from one generation to the next has always seemed like the forging of a chain, a chain from the first Scottish Campbells to me, here and now, and then extending from me into the future. I’m part of that chain as long as I’m entrusted with the opal, only one link, but I’m terribly important, just as any link in a chain is important. I’m the joining of the past and the future. Oh, I can see I’m not making my feeling for the opal clear to you.”

  “The opal is only a mineral dug from the earth.”

  “To me, it’s more; that’s what I’m saying. To me it represents our family, the continuity between my ancestors and me. The stone gives me something to belong to, to hold on to; it tells me there has been a past and promises there will be a future.”

  “That’s an awfully mystical feeling.”

  “Yes, I suppose you could call it mystical. Yet it’s very real to me.”

  “Then you’d never consider selling the opal? Or even using it as collateral for a loan?”

  “No!” She reached out and laid one hand lightly on his arm. “I didn’t mean to react so strongly. The idea of selling never occurred to me before, and now that you’ve mentioned it, well, I’m sure I couldn’t. Not ever.”

  He tousled her hair but she held herself rigid and unyielding. “I’m not surprised about how you feel,” he said.

  “Why did you ask how much the opal’s worth?”

  “Just curious. Until you told me a couple of months ago I knew nothing of the opal or the power of precognition it seems to give you. I guess I wanted to know as much about it as I could.”

  “There’s more to your questions than that. I can tell by the way you avoid looking at me. Something’s bothering you.”

  “It’s money; money’s tight right now.”

  “I can always go to work. I don’t mind, not really, and I saw an ad for RNs in the Marquette paper the other day.”

  “Lesley, you don’t understand. I don’t mean we need a few thousand dollars to tide us over. I have debts, large debts, and I’m afraid your working or my working won’t make much difference.”

  “Tell me. Shouldn’t I know? Don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you. I hate to worry you—I guess I’m old-fashioned—I don’t like to bother you with a problem not of your making.”

  “When I married you, your problems became mine. How bad is it?”

  “We might lose Iron Ridge. Not only the house, the land as well. Everything. You’ve told me what your
opal means to you; Iron Ridge means at least as much to me. To have to sell, to have others, strangers, living at Iron Ridge, I don’t know whether I could take that.”

  “I didn’t realize.” She walked to the window where she looked across the beach to the dock and the lake beyond. The sky over the water was a cobalt blue. She could understand how much Iron Ridge must mean to Jon.

  “You could help me, Lesley.” His voice was soft, and when she turned from the window she found his eyes on her as though he tried to read her reaction.

  “The opal,” he said slowly. “I realize you couldn’t sell the opal; I wouldn’t want you to. But the stone gives you power, and that’s a rare and remarkable gift. A valuable gift if you could bring yourself to use it; not for me, for us. You said you don’t dream of things, only of people. What if you happened to meet someone, a person about to begin a new venture? Do you think you could tell whether he’d be successful? Could you do that? What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” A sudden suspicion about Jon’s debts chilled her. “The money you owe. Is Charles Randall involved? The man I saw in Marquette?”

  “Yes, Randall’s involved. I wish he weren’t, but he is.”

  She pursed her lips. “I don’t understand.”

  “I owe him money. A great deal of money.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed. I must help him, she told herself. “All right. I’ll try. I don’t think I can, but I’ll try. What do you want me to do?”

  He pulled her down beside him, took her in his arms, his hand moving up over her back. For the first time she felt nothing when he touched her.

  “No, not now.” She got up and stood beside the bed. “I don’t feel right about having to use the opal. I’m upset.”

  “But you will? You said you would.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’m going to bring someone here. Tonight, to Iron Ridge. His name’s Chet Hawley, he’s an old-timer from around these parts who wants me to go in with him on a mining venture. The details aren’t important, but I could make a great deal of money in a very short time. Or lose the rest of what I have. The result depends on him, on his character, whether he’s telling the truth. Maybe even if he’s not on the level he’s come to believe his own claims; he might be fooling himself. I have to know.”