The amazon's eyes lit up, Hope could imagine her giving her tour and dropping that little tidbit of information as if she had heard it from the great man personally. “Please go ahead. Do you need help?”
“No, thanks. My equipment takes a little time to set up, though,” Hope babbled, moving toward the study at the back of the house. “The lighting, you know. It can be disturbed just by an extra shadow or a reflection.”
Quickly she opened the tripod and attached her camera. Then it took five minutes to remove two stubborn screws from the original frame and slip the original key into her oversized purse. She had threaded the screws through the hole and had barely tightened one when the amazon appeared.
Hope's heart stopped, lodging in her throat. Her eyes darted to her purse to make sure the original was out of sight before she smiled benignly at the woman. Then she turned back to the frame and began unscrewing the screw she had just tightened.
“What are you doing?” the woman demanded.
Hope turned surprised eyes toward her. “Why, I'm taking down the key to photograph it. It's too high, you see, and the lighting reflects off the glass. I’ll have to photograph it on the roll-top desk to do it justice.”
“I'm afraid that's impossible,” the woman's voice was sharp with disapproval. “Nothing is to be touched or moved. You might break the dustproof seal on the frame.”
Hope shrugged her shoulders as if it didn't matter to her. “Okay, if that's the way you feel about it. I was just trying to get the best shot, that's all.” She began tightening the screws again, praying her hands wouldn't shake. All four screws were in place and the camera aimed toward the frame before the woman left her alone.
As soon as she was gone, a giddy smile appeared on Hope's face. Her lungs filled completely for the first time since she had picked up the bogus key from the jewelers. It was all she could do not to dash out of the house and never look back. As it was, after she calmed down, she spent another five minutes taking pictures. Then, equipment in hand and the original frame safely tucked away in her purse, she made her way down the hallway and out the door, expecting a large hand to clamp on her shoulder at any minute.
She giggled with relief as she drove away. Hope Langston, all-around photographer and mistress of intrigue.
She couldn't wait to get back and tell Armand all about it! Suddenly her smile disappeared, and her foot pushed harder on the gas pedal. She prayed she'd see him one more time.
Just one more time...
Dark clouds boiled on the horizon, turning the tops of pines and aspens an ominous, smoky black. She noticed none of it. All her worries centered on Armand. Would he be there, or had he disappeared already—perhaps when she had screwed the last screw in place? Or was he waiting for her, the walls finally disintegrating? Her lips moved in another prayer as she began the trek up the small hill toward the rock—and Armand.
Her eyes darted continually through the trees, seeking the invisible wall, searching for him. Panic sent her feet flying. Her eyes scoured the underbrush, the forest.
“Armand!” she called, her voice echoing through the trees and across the lake. “Armand!” But he didn't answer, and her heart thudded painfully. Still, she kept going. When she reached their clearing, she dropped her purse and slowly did a complete turn, searching intently. Then, as her muscles finally lost their strength, she sank to the ground, leaning against the big boulder.
“He's gone.” She heard herself say the words aloud, but her brain was too numb for them to register. She clung to only one thought.
She had to get him back. She had to! Just one last time, so she could tell him how much she loved him, feel at one with him again. He had been right all along, they were meant to be together. He was her other half. Her eyes burned at the futile thought of lost moments when she might have spoken to him. She had never told him about the feelings that went beyond her love—he was her necessity, as much as the earth, air, water, food.
The chest! She jumped to her feet and moved quickly toward the tent. The chest! The key and the chest had not been together yet! It still might work, might make him real instead of dissolving him! There was a chance… With strength she didn't know she had, she grasped the brass handle and pulled the chest out of the tent, dragging it toward the rock. Her breath was like a small bellows in her ears.
She ran back for the screwdriver and began picking at the dried earth jammed into the keyhole. Salty tears of frustration poured down her cheeks. Her moan turned into a cry at the earth's reluctance to give its prize away.
With determination born of desperation, she finally managed to break up the dirt enough to blow it out. She swiped at her chin, wiping away teardrops that had collected there and leaving behind a wide streak of dirt. She didn't care. Nothing mattered except the ancient brass chest that sat on the ground in front of her.
Scrambling across the ground, she reached for her purse and the framed key inside. She lifted it out, and at first tried to pry open the back of the sturdy frame. It wouldn't budge. Tiny mewling sounds rose in her throat. Finally, clutching a small rock in her shaking fingers, she smashed the glass and grabbed the key, cutting her hand in the process. She stared at the drop of blood for a moment. It didn't matter. There was no pain. Only the pain deep within her breast.
With another gulp of air, she slipped the key into the lock, working out the rest of the soil that had settled there over time. She had to be gentle, for fear of damaging the key or the lock. Her fingers shook with the delicacy of her task. If the key broke, any chance she had of getting Armand back would be broken, too. Tears continued to course down her cheeks. Though a gust of wind touched the wetness, she didn't feel it. She didn't know she was crying.
When she first heard the whistling, she thought it was the gathering wind playing a trick on her. But there it was again, soft and sweet, and as achingly familiar as it had always been. She froze, not moving a muscle as the minutes ticked by.
“Armand?” she whispered huskily, still unsure. She sniffled again, waiting for the tune to fade away. But it didn’t. Instead it lifted on the breeze and wrapped around her, its haunting melody both treasured and feared. Was it a beginning or an end? “Armand? Are you here?” she asked the breeze again.
“Yes, ma petite chérie,” His voice was whisper-soft, seeming to echo in her mind more than on the breeze, but filled with his own special blend of humor and sadness. “But I am afraid that I can see you far better than you can see me.”
She twirled around, her eyes darting everywhere as she hoped against hope. “Where are you?” she whispered, suddenly afraid she was losing her mind.
“I am in the air, above you, next to you, my Hope.”
“I found the key,” She held it up in the air, like a sacrifice to appease the gods. She would give up anything to have Armand. Anything. “I put it in the lock, Armand.” She tried desperately to gulp the lump from her throat. It hurt to breathe, hurt to see. Everything hurt so badly. A thousand knives slashed her skin and broke her bones, splitting her apart. She wiped away more tears with her sleeve. “I thought maybe you'd return if I used the key. But I'm too late.”
“No.” His voice reached out to her on a gust of warm air. “You are not too late, sweet. You are just in time.”
“What should I do?” Although her voice was a bare whisper, it sounded like a child's cry in the night.
“Stand up, my églantier. Let me see you. All of you, just as when we met.”
Her knees wobbled as she stood, but her hands were swift and sure as she undressed and turned around. She didn't care that she couldn't see him, as long as he was with her. Still with her. Talking to her. She couldn't lose this last thread that still tied them together. She wouldn't.
The warm breeze caressed her as if his hands were there, touching her breasts, teasing her stomach, soothing her skin with the warmth of his.
“I love you, my Hope. I love you more than I can say. But I do not have to explain that to you, do I? You understand, do
you not?”
Her earlier fears had been groundless. There was no need for explanations now. He understood the depth of their love as well as she. Words weren't needed. “Yes, I know. And you know you are my life,” she said simply. She stood straighter, dignity etched in every line of her naked form.
“Be strong, my Hope. Be as strong as you have it in you to be. We will meet again. No matter how or where, we will be together again. I swear this. And when next we meet, we will both be free to love and be loved. As it was meant to be.”
Her heart was pounding, and she was filled with the abject fear of losing him. Yet she knew there was nothing more she could do. If he didn't stay, she would be empty, left with an unbearably lonely life held together only by memories. Unless he was right... “How…how do you know?”
He chuckled ruefully. “How do I know that the sun will rise again and again? How do l know that you will have fine children? There is certainty in both things. I just know.”
Her stark fear turned to frustrated fury, building up inside her then bursting forth to release the unbearable tension she felt. “You’re one hell of an arrogant, pompous Frenchman!” she screamed, wanting, needing, craving reassurance she knew he could not give her.
“And you are a very giving, loving woman with a temper that rivals the Furies themselves,” he whispered in her ears, a hint of impish deviltry in his soft voice. “You are my sweetbriar.”
Tears blurred her vision. She thrashed the air for his form, her arms raised high. “Don't go. Please don't leave me,” she begged in a husky whisper.
“Shhh, little one. Let me feel you next to me one last time,” he said. The breeze ruffled her long hair as she stood silent, finally closing her eyes to shut out the inevitable. Suddenly the warm breeze surrounded her, touching her here, there, wrapping around her waist as if it were her lover's arms. All the while her tears cascaded down her cheeks. Her breath came harshly, and so shallowly that it made her dizzy.
And the yearning built.
Wherever the breeze touched her, it fanned a fire that before only Armand had been able to build. It played with the loose strands of her hair, lit on her eyes and mouth, gently stroked her breasts and made them full and ripe with Armand's love.
A deep moan escaped her throat, but she couldn't say whether it was from the torture of losing him or the torture of the loving breeze.
“I love you, Hope. Never doubt it,” the wind said, echoing the sound of Armand's voice in her mind.
She could only sigh in response. She tossed her head back and lifted her face to the sky her hair swirling madly around her.
“No matter how or where, we will be together again. I swear it, my Hope. God is merciful, and we have suffered enough.”
She shuddered then, losing her balance to the climax that electrified her body. But the wind wrapped tightly around her, holding her upright. A light puff once more touched her parted lips and she drank it in. Crackling lightning rent the air zigzagging across the sky before it burrowed back into a dark and ominous cloud and was gone.
She sank to the ground, head back and arms reaching toward the sky. A deep, tormented scream of denial ripped from her throat into the now-empty air, as if unbearable pain was tearing her very soul apart. “Noooo!”
She had to try! She had to bring him back! She scrambled on hands and knees toward the chest, quickly turned the key to spring the lock. The moment she did, the island fell silent. Not even a bird chirped.
He was gone.
The next three days were a complete blur to Hope, and she was thankful for that in an absentminded way. She marveled that, when she looked in the mirror, she saw the same person she had been seeing for years.
“She walks, she talks, she's almost human,” she muttered to herself one day, the first words she had spoken aloud since that stormy afternoon in the clearing. Then she gave a hollow laugh that ended with a sob.
Her mind had been put on hold. Every action she performed was only to enable her to exist until the next day. Nothing was important. Nothing mattered. Nothing was a word that described the sum total of her life. Without Armand’s living presence, she had no life.
The months spent with him felt like a lifetime. Yet all she had to show for her love was a corroded brass chest and its contents: a diary written in French and a miniature of a woman who looked so much like herself that it was mesmerizing. Oh, yes. And an ivory key she carried strung around her neck like a talisman as a reminder of his deep love, his caring. His very existence. And every time she cried great sobbing cries, she held the key close to her breast and felt, if not a measure of peace, at least some comfort. Armand had once held it in his hands.
Sometimes she treasured the key. Other times she wanted to crush it, to damage it beyond repair, so that she could release herself from its hold on her. She wavered back and forth, but her love for Armand always won over her hatred of the Fates.
The fourth day she woke up angry. She sat up in bed and looked down at herself. For the past three days she had worn nothing but an old T-shirt and a pair of bikini panties. Both had seen better days. Her hair was oily and matted, her face puffy from crying, and there were smudgy bags under her blank, dull eyes.
“Damn you, Armand!” she screamed brokenly. “You left me! You left me behind, and now you have peace while I have nothing! Nothing! Do you hear me?” she bellowed, and it felt good. “Damn you! If you were any kind of a man at all, you'd have found a way out of this mess!”
Her fists pounded the mattress as she sat there, glaring at the ceiling. How dare he leave her behind while he floated around on some cushy damn cloud, or whatever souls did? Who did he think he was, giving her a taste of heaven only to leave her in a hell like this?
Then she began to laugh. Not only had he reduced her to a driveling idiot, she had let him! Well, no more, her mind cried. No more! She might be down, but she certainly wasn't out for the count. He could rot in hell before she’d waste one more day wishing for him!
Her body craved action. Any movement to feel alive once more. She packed her bag with enough clothes for a week. The key came off her neck for the first time and was tucked safely in her purse. Then, locking the door behind her, she headed for Duluth and, from there, Washington. She would see her father, testify before the Foreign Affairs Committee and then return to the island to pack her things.
On the way to the airport, she left Armand’s diary with a translator. She instructed him to work backward. Last page first. She would pick up as many pages as he'd completed within the next week. But she had a few other errands to do before heading for Washington.
She had her hair cut to a shorter, more manageable style, had her nails done, and even treated herself to a facial. The purple smudges under her eyes were still there, but her eyes themselves were gradually taking on a glittery hardness she wouldn't have thought possible a few months ago. Not even the jungles of Sao Jimenez had been able to do this to her! Everything in her life—her father, the kidnapping, her career—had been put into perspective by her experience with Armand.
But she couldn't resist the enormous power of the John Picard House. With plodding steps, she walked through the door and down the hall to see the ivory key once more. It was still there, the brass gleaming, the green velvet still lush. A small, sad smile touched her lips for the first time in more than a week, revealing the depth and vulnerability that nothing, not even time, could ever erase.
“Can I help you with anything?” Hope turned toward a young girl in Victorian dress standing hesitantly in the doorway.
“No, thank you. I'm just saying goodbye.” Hope’s smile was fleeting. One more quick look over her shoulder at the imposter key, and then she was gone, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor with a ghostly echo down the silent hallway.
It was a little over a week before she went back to Duluth. There was a newfound peace between Hope and her father. They had been able to communicate better than at any other time she could recall, and that brought a ce
rtain peace inside herself. At last.
But still her every thought, her every action recalled Armand. If she had ever thought her heart broken with his leaving, she was wrong. It was her day-to-day life, no matter where she was, that brought to mind her loneliness and his love. She missed him with every look she saw lovers exchange, with every breath of air that failed to satisfy the yearning so deep inside her.
And she couldn't talk about it, couldn't tell anyone. If she did, who would believe she was sane? Certainly not her father. So she just went on smiling at people she didn't know and didn't care about, carrying on inane conversations on subjects she had no interest in, and went on pretending she was fine. All the while she was bleeding inside. She had a wound that could not be fixed, patched, mended or cured.
When she left Washington, she promised her father she'd return in a month to spend the winter with him. She tried to reassure him she'd be all right, but both knew that was a lie. She could see his concern for her in his eyes, yet there was nothing she could do to relieve it.
Returning to Duluth and the island was even harder than staying in Washington. Hope drove onto the dock of Teardrop Island at five-thirty in the afternoon, the translated pages of Armand's diary tucked in her purse—unread. Night was falling more quickly now, and there was a briskness in the air that hadn't been there the previous week. Summer was over, and fall was looming. The leaves were beginning to dry, and at the first freeze they would display a glorious riot of colors.
That night Hope slept like a baby.
The next morning she showered, washed her hair and even applied a touch of makeup. Then, with the transcript of Armand's diary in her hand, she trudged up the hill to the boulder. That seemed a fitting place to read Armand's most secret thoughts.
Three hours later she was crying quietly. She had thought she had known him before, but she knew him even better now. The last passage he had written explained more than she had ever wanted to know.
The Ivory Key Page 17