“Loveable artist walking Florence / Rappin’ to the paint in a Paris state of mind / Stressful, adventure, old, like a Time / Beyond the walls of travel, life is defined / A long ago jewelry is quite the foolery / Yea, yaz / In a Paris state of mind.”
Her rapping wasn’t any better than her singing, but nobody could hear her.
The alarm-activated light came on, and the LCD screen blinked. The cameras cycled through the system, showing views of the front of the building, the studio, the storeroom, all the rooms in the apartment, the third-floor storage, and the backyard. It might be an unpretentious studio on the cobblestoned Via Toscanella, but her building had a state-of-the-art security system. The windows and doors were now secured, and the IR break beam in the walk-in safe was activated. A handheld remote allowed her to deactivate a single door to allow entry in the event of an emergency or an after-hours visitor. Her jewelry and paintings couldn’t be any safer if they were stored in the Accademia Gallery. Well, maybe that was an exaggeration, but close enough.
Her studio was now officially closed, locked, and alarmed for the next two weeks.
She mounted the stairs to the apartment, where she toed off her shoes and left them on the top step. The building’s northern exposure had sold her on the location for a studio, but the frescoed walls in the upstairs living room sealed the deal. She’d remodeled the kitchen in what she called a sleek Tuscan style, and turned three bedrooms into two master suites plus a small room for her sewing machine and desktop computer.
The door to that room stood ajar, with fabric remnants scattered on the floor along with a pillow and blanket. She had fallen asleep while adding the finishing touches to her blue-green wool and silk reversible traveling dress, made from a flame-retardant and stain-resistant fabric. A white blouse to wear under the waistcoat was folded over the ironing board, and a large felt hat trimmed with teal moiré ribbon, an antique silver buckle, and an ostrich feather plume sat atop her sewing mannequin’s narrow shoulders.
Instead of confronting the mess, she went to the kitchen, looking forward to finishing the Florentine steak and roasted vegetables she had for lunch. The waiter at the restaurant down the street had kindly boxed up the leftovers. But when she looked in the refrigerator, the box wasn’t there.
“Dang. I left it at the restaurant.” What was she going to eat now? The ciambelle? While she was looking in her empty refrigerator, her phone rang. The call was from Lukas, owner of the Osteria Toscanella.
“Pronto.”
“Sophia, dear. It’s your dinnertime and you forgot your leftovers. I’m bringing you something to eat. Open the back door.”
“You don’t need to do that. I can eat something out of the freezer.”
“You hate frozen food. Besides, I want to see your Mona Lisa before Ivan carries her away.”
“I’ll buzz the door open.” She waited a couple of minutes before unlocking the door with the remote. Then she opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. A light blinked on the remote, indicating the back door opened. When she didn’t hear Lukas on the steps, she went to the apartment door. “Are you coming up?”
“In a minute.”
She knew what that meant. He was looking at the painting. She carried the glasses of wine down to meet him.
He was standing in front of the Mona Lisa. “This is extraordinary.” He kissed Sophia’s cheeks and exchanged the carryout box for a glass of wine.
“Coming from another artist, that means the world to me.”
“This is much better than your first attempt.” He sipped his wine. “If you painted in the eighteenth century, they would consider you one of the Old Masters.”
“I’d much rather copy them than be a contemporary, but thank you.”
“I’m surprised Ivan’s not here to pick it up.”
She sat on her stool and placed the carryout box on the worktable. “If he was in town, he would be.”
Lukas’s attention moved from the painting to Sophia. “You look tired. I know July is a hard month for you.”
“It gets a little easier every year.”
He put an arm around her and hugged her to his side. He was her gentle giant—handsome, thoughtful, and twenty years older. To change the subject, she said, “Thanks for dinner. If I’d been forced to eat frozen food, I might have thrown up. I get so anxious before leaving on a holiday.”
“If I was going off to meet a married lover, I’d be anxious too.”
She spit out wine in a peal of laughter. The red wine hit the paint-splattered floor and blended right in. “Where in the world did that come from?”
Lukas grabbed paper towels and wiped up the wine. “It’s the same two weeks every year. You never say where you’re going, or even how you’re getting there. It has to be a married lover.”
“Oh, Lukas…” This time she burst out in a fit of good-natured laughter and slipped off the stool, somehow managing not to fall on her butt or spill the rest of her wine. When she finally got herself under control, she wiped her eyes and safely sipped again. “You can’t imagine how wrong you are. Besides, you’ll always be the second love of my life.”
And there it was, just like that, the knot of pain in her chest. While it had become smaller over time, it never disappeared. It was a chronic illness—a permanent condition she managed to control in the privacy of her brain.
And the laughter stopped.
Lukas threw the paper towels into the trash. “Go to America and find him. This has gone on way too long. Every summer from the middle of June to the middle of July you go through this.”
“I can’t. I don’t want to know he’s happily married with kids who look like him and a wife pregnant with another one.”
“If you’re not going to America to look for him, then whatever you do, be careful out there.”
“I will.” She changed the subject. “What about your mom? You haven’t mentioned her lately. Is she doing better?”
He shook his head. “If she doesn’t improve, I’ll have to go to Naples for a few months and let my partner manage the restaurant.”
“Stefano will do a good job. If there’s anything I can do, just ask.”
“You can be careful and not take any risks.” He finished his wine, set the glass on the work table, and glanced up at the clock. “I’ve got to go. There’s a large group of Americans doing a food and wine tour, and I’m providing the main course.”
“That’s such good advertising for the restaurant. I hope they’ll all come back for another meal.” She walked him to the rear door and he kissed her cheeks again.
“I worry so much about you. Be extra-careful this year. Weird things have been happening to people I know, and I don’t want you to be one of them.”
She placed her hands on his muscular back and pushed him toward the door. “Go, before I change my mind and cancel my trip to stay home and read. How boring would that be?”
“It might be boring, but it would be safer.” He stopped and turned around, taking her hands in his. “I have two tickets next month for a performance of The Nullafacente at the Teatro Niccolini. Will you join me?”
“If you’re here, I’d love to go. It’s been ages since I’ve seen a good play, but if you leave town, give the tickets to Stefano.”
“I’ll do that. I read a quote about the play in an advertisement. The director said, ‘This work is a lie, but lying, sometimes, if observed well, brings us closer to the truth.’”
“Hmm. I’ll have to think about that one.” She opened the door. “Ciao caro. I’ll see you in two weeks, or whenever…” She locked the door behind him. Lukas was such a good friend, but his worrying stressed her out. She’d have to remember to light a candle for his mother.
When she returned to the kitchen with the boxed dinner, she set the table with her grandmother’s china. Dining at home or in a restaurant, according to Nonna, was a culinary delight that should never be rushed or distracted by phones or TVs.
After dinner, she carried
her second glass of wine into the sewing room and pulled a chair up to the desk. The utility bills for her grandfather’s old law office in Edinburgh needed to be paid for another six months. Sophia visited there once after her grandmother died, just to see the place, which was located a block off the Royal Mile. The two-room office was strewn with books and files and looked like a lawyer left work one day and never returned. And that’s exactly what had happened when her grandfather dropped dead from a heart attack. If she could find a buyer, she’d sell it.
After paying the utility bills online, she responded to an email from a potential client, who would have to wait until she returned to discuss the project. Then she sent her accountant notice that she was going out of town. Her CPA had a copy of her will, a set of keys, and security codes to the building. If after six months, Sophia didn’t return, the CPA had instructions to put all assets into a trust for one year. If she didn’t return after that year, the instructions were to liquidate all assets pursuant to the terms of her will.
With business out of the way, she unlocked the safe under the desk. Inside were velvet pouches holding her collection of diamonds and pearls, along with a small jewelry box, a gift from her grandmother. Folded into the box’s lid was a fragile letter written by James MacKlenna following the death of his father in 1625. She didn’t open the letter. She already knew the contents by heart.
Sewn into the box’s velvet lining were embroidered designs of four Celtic brooches, identical except for the gemstones in the center of each brooch. The first brooch had a sapphire, the second an emerald, the third a diamond. There was no sapphire, emerald, or diamond in the box, but there was an antique pearl brooch.
On her deathbed, Nonna had pressed the brooch into Sophia’s hand and made her promise to guard it well. Now that Sophia understood its secrets, she was determined to do as Nonna had asked, and as James MacKlenna had instructed. If the Keeper referred to in the letter had already returned, and the sapphire, emerald, and diamond brooches had found their way to him, then so would her pearl.
Sophia turned her brooch over in her hand. It was already warm, as if it knew she would soon call upon its magic. Her first time-slip was an accident. As soon as she sounded out the Gaelic words in the inscription on the pearl, the fog had carried her back in time to Florence in the year 1504. She spent two days living in absolute terror until she bumped into Leonardo da Vinci chasing butterflies.
Was she scared now? Of course, but being scared wasn’t going to stop her from going back to Paris in the year 1786. She knew everything about the Court of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. And she’d studied the life and work of the queen’s official portraitist, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, the artist she intended to commission.
Sophia set the brooch back inside the jewelry box and returned it to the safe. The apartment was so well-protected she could have left the brooch on the windowsill, but she was pragmatic, and never tempted fate. She laughed at the ridiculous thought.
If slipping through time wasn’t tempting fate, then, good grief what was?
She straightened up the sewing room and organized the few clothes she was taking with her. Satisfied that she’d done everything she could for the night, she climbed into bed and began to visualize what she would do when she woke up: Tai Chi, dress, say the magic words, arrive in Paris, trade a pearl or two for a few thousand livres, make living arrangements, and…
Her eyelids drifted shut.
When the alarm sounded the next morning, Sophia popped out of bed. Her right knee had been bothering her recently, but it wasn’t bad enough to skip her daily Tai Chi practice, although she did cut her two-hour workout down to an hour.
Later she stood in front of the full-length mirror, adjusting her ostrich plume hat atop a curly wig with blonde ringlets framing her face to her shoulders, then mixing with her natural hair to cascade down her back. A quick turn this way and that, and she smiled. It truly was a gorgeous ensemble.
Satisfied with her appearance, she opened the safe again and removed the brooch and pouches of diamonds and pearls. She added an antique gold and platinum necklace and earbobs with pearls and gemstones to a separate pouch. A girl always needed extra jewelry, especially if she scored an audience with the king or queen.
The jewelry pouches were tucked into one of the deep pockets sewn into her skirt, along with a small velvet bag filled with a toothbrush, dental floss, antibiotics, pain relievers, and water purifying tablets. An extra chemise and a Tai Chi outfit for morning workouts were folded into teeny-tiny squares and added to the skirt’s other hidden pocket.
She picked up the pearl brooch and almost dropped it. The pearl seemed hotter than usual. She tossed the brooch back and forth between her hands. It was more fired up than she was at the idea of going through the fog—always a frightening experience. No matter how often she jumped aboard the twisting, turning roller-coaster and traveled at warp speed with dips and banked turns, she always wanted off, but nothing could stop the magic.
With the tip of her fingernail, she opened the large pearl in the center of the brooch. Without the slightest hesitation, she recited the inscription engraved there: “Chan ann le tìm no àite a bhios sinn a’ tomhais an’ gaol ach ’s ann le neart anama.”
The air filled with the heavy fragrance of damp earth, and a thick veil of fog arose from the floor, flowing across the room, swirling and creeping up the walls. The atmospheric conditions were identical every time it appeared, and the effect was just as disorienting.
“Take me to Paris in the year 1786.” As the fog settled over her, she closed her eyes and visualized the Place de la Concorde as it would have been, not as it looked today.
Within seconds she was strapped in and zipping along at full throttle, unable to prepare for the massive hang time in the middle of a loop, followed by a stop inside a tunnel that almost made her believe something had gone wrong before she was catapulted backward, climbing up into a massive loop again. The G force was so intense, she almost blacked out. That was the worst part. But it was quickly over, and she rolled to a gentle stop.
When she stepped out of the fog, she found herself surrounded by hundreds of farmers and laborers, timeworn and weary, who were yelling and shaking pitchforks in the air.
She shoved the brooch deep into her pocket and hid beneath the leafy branches of a chestnut tree while scanning the scene around her. Although the buildings, clothing, and streets all resembled the eighteenth-century paintings of Paris she’d seen, nothing in her research mentioned riots in 1786.
Nearby, a man stood atop a table waving a pistol. “Citizens, there’s no time to lose. The dismissal of Necker is the death knell of a Saint Bartholomew for patriots! This very night, the Swiss and German battalions will emerge from the Champ de Mars to massacre us all. Only one recourse is left…to take arms.”
Necker? Take arms? My God. What year is this?
2
Lexington, KY—Kevin
The weather forecast throughout the Southeast threatened hotter-than-hell temperatures. It was an unusual heat wave, even for Kentucky.
The newscaster claimed it was the last day. No one believed it. Eight o’clock in the morning, and you could already feel it in the air, an unfamiliar weight curling down on Kevin Fraser’s vineyards at MacKlenna Farm. If the heat wave continued, they’d start worrying about retaining acidity in the grapes. The acidity would dip as sugar accumulated, and make the backbone of his fresh grapes shapeless, lacking in promise, and ultimately flawed.
But for the next two days he’d hold off worrying so he could enjoy the family get-together at Mallory Plantation in Richmond, Virginia.
Since his dad had the corporate jet in California, Kevin and his wife JL were flying his Cessna to Richmond. He was a private pilot with over fifteen hundred hours of flight time under his belt. He never took any chances, especially with his family on board, and never violated the FAA’s bottle-to-throttle eight-hour abstention from alcohol rule. In fact, he obeyed all the rule
s all the time, without exception. He’d come close a time or two, but that was before he married JL, before she had their son Blane, and long before she got pregnant again.
He logged onto a flight-related blog to read the chatter. He’d listened to the local newscaster, but when he was flying he didn’t rely solely on weather reports delivered in a studio by a newscaster with capped teeth and helmet hair standing in front of a green screen. He wanted to hear from pilots with firsthand information. As expected, nearly all the messages recently posted confirmed it was a perfect day to fly.
At Blue Grass Airport, Kevin filed a flight plan and went through the preflight check. It was so damn hot, his shirt was drenched, and the heat wilted everything green in the landscape and shimmered up from the tarmac.
JL came out of the hangar in her own petite, six-month pregnant atmosphere. You could still see the young girl in her walk. The one thing, even after a decade as a cop, she couldn’t make over—her ballerina stroll, distinguished by her upright carriage, extended neck, and carefully turned-out feet. He’d seen teenage pictures of her with her telltale accessories: bottled water, Capezio labels, and a leotard-stuffed shoulder bag with slipper ribbons dangling. If they ever had a daughter, he could imagine her looking just like her mom.
JL was tapping on her phone with the long cord of her headphones fluttering in her wake. It was no wonder her headphones never lasted more than a year. And with wireless earbuds, she always lost either the left one or the right one.
“Sorry, I had to potty.”
“Figured,” he said, helping her up into the copilot’s seat. She accidentally jabbed him in the chest with a small, pointy elbow, and he tangled his fingers in the cord, tugging the headphones halfway off her head.
“Are you trying to tear up my Beats?” She pulled them off the rest of the way and shoved the headphones with the cord bunched up into her flight bag.
“I don’t have to, love. You do a fine job of it all by yourself.” He rubbed his chest and made a mental note to add a new pair of headphones to his for-JL Christmas list.
The Pearl Brooch Page 2