A Broken Fate (The Beautiful Fate Series book 2) (22 page)

“What
’s in the box?” he asked, pointing his chin in the direction of the bookshelf. I scrunched up my nose and turned around in the direction he was pointing.

“I don
’t know,” I said standing up. “Let’s check it out.”

I slid the box across the floor and it stopped next to Collin
’s feet. I took a seat on the floor next to the box and pulled off the packing tape that held it closed. Collin got on the floor and sat across from me on the other side of the box. I flipped open the flaps and pulled out a note; it was written in French and signed by François, the caretaker.

The note explained that the contents of the box had been left to me and that he had forgotten about it until the new owner found them in the attic. He apologized for the delay in the shipping.

I peered down into the brown cardboard parcel and began to unwrap a seemingly endless supply of bubble wrap. I pulled out a pair of scissors and set them down on the floor beside me, reached back into the box and pulled out another, and then another and another until twenty-three pairs were lined up on the floor next to me. The scissors were of all different sizes. Some had intricate hand crafted handles and others were simple and plain. Some were shiny silver and others were rusty brown. I laughed to myself and shook my head.

“What is all this?” Collin asked.

“When I was a child my mom and I loved to go to flea markets and run down antique stores. She collected scissors.” I rolled my eyes. “She used to be fascinated with them or something. I don’t really know. Anyway, she collected them, and we had all of these scissors framed in a beautiful glass case that hung on the wall in our living room in Montréal. I came home from school one day right before we moved to Chicago and found the glass front of the case had shattered all over the living room floor. The scissors were nowhere to be seen and I assumed they had been picked up, boxed, and put away before I got home that day.”

I took my favorite pair of scissors up out of the pile and turned them around in my hand. They were small and golden. The handles were in the shape of a heron
’s wings and the blades served as a beak.

“My mom used to say that scissors are one of the most underestimated tools we use. That their purpose is profound and yet we take them for granted. She would point out all the uses we have for them -- from the mundane, like teaching children to cut out simple shapes and removing scratchy tags from new clothing, to the more demanding, such as cutting hair and fingernails, and finally to the seriously difficult, like saving lives in open heart surgery.”

I shook my head incredulously at the box’s contents, put the pair I had in my hand back in the pile, and stood up, dismissing the box’s contents.

“Wait,” Collin grabbed my hand and then quickly released it.

“There’s more….uh, stuff in the box.”

I sat back down and I pulled out a th
ick envelope and tore it open, the envelope held my mother’s brown, leather-bound journal. I scanned the through the diary quickly and saw immediately that some of the entries had been made in blue ink, while others were in black or red. Here and there, she had circled a letter in a different color.

Collin was watching over my shoulder as I looked through the diary. We both stared at the writings for a fe
w minutes and finally he spoke:

“It
’s a code.”

“A what?”

“It’s an Alberti polyalphabetic cipher. A code.”

I turned and stared at Colin and waited for him to elaborate.

“The Alberti Cipher is basically a deliberately jumbled alphabet used to scramble a message. But you can see that your mother wrote the message very carefully. Certain parts are done in certain colors on purpose and then she circled different letters in different colors. It’s all in code you have to figure out what it is she was trying to tell you.”

“No way,” I said and stared at the scribbled handwriting in front of me. “Ok, how do I figure
out this message?”

Collin pursed his lips and took the journal out of my hands.

“Well,” he said, “you’ll need a Vigenere square. Then I guess that you’ll need to separate the entries in order of the color of the ink the letters are written in. Then you need to go through each one and find the circled words and separate them by color. And then you can try to decode the letters. When the letters are straightened out, then you can unscramble the words.”

I ground my teeth in frustration.

“What’s a Vigenere…?”

“Vigenere square,” Colin said the words again, a little louder and more deliberately, much as someone using a foreign language speaks more slowly, thinking his meaning will be clear as a result. “It
’s a table -- a square with 26 alphabets in it. Each alphabet shifts one letter to the left from the one above it.”

“How do I find one of those?”

“Wikipedia, of course.”

“Of course,” I said dryly.

“May I?” Colin pointed to my MacBook.

“Be my guest.”

Within seconds, Colin pulled up an example of a Vigenere square and printed it.

“Holy cow, this will take ages,” I said, hitting my palm on my forehead.

“Yeah, but are you really going to even bother? I mean do you think that what she was trying to save for you so long ago could really be important?”

I swallowed hard, and nodded my head. This was my key to No. 7. I knew it. My mom had known all along. My dad had probably told her about him before he died and she had spent seventeen years writing me cryptic messages trying to tell me about it.

“Yep, I think I’ll give it a try,” I said nonchalantly. “I mean what else do I have to do with my time?”

“OK,” Collin smiled, “I
’ll help you get started.”

“You want to help me?” I asked, a little surprised. The last I heard, I gave Collin the creeps.

“Absolutely, I love this kind of stuff. When I was kid, my best friend and I sent messages like this to each other all the time, for fun.”

“Huh…fun,” I said sarcastically, twirling another pair of scissors around in my hand. We got started.

We first organized the journal entries by ink color. The earliest of them had been entered in Montréal when I was a small child, and they continued fairly regularly up until the time we moved to Chicago.

I
’ll admit the whole project did kind of make me frustrated. Why couldn’t she just have told me what it was I needed to know? Why make me go through these mental gymnastics? And what if I had never received the diary, then what?

“Arg, how frustrating,” I said as I tossed the journal at the door. It was still flying through the air when the door opened and stopped only when it hit Ari
’s shin.

“Nice to see you, too,” he said picking the journal up off the floor. “What is all of this?”

I explained that I had finally gotten around to opening the box from Montréal and that what Collin and I found in it was a giant pile of scissors and a journal. Ari thumbed quickly through the diary.

“So it
’s just a journal and an odd inheritance of a scissor collection?”

“No, it
’s more than that,” Collin chimed in excitedly and explained that there was a message hidden in the letters. Collin had his back to me so I held up seven of my fingers and Ari’s eyes grew wide.

Ari tossed his suit jacket on the chair, sat on the floor next to me and listened intently to Collin
’s explanation of the Alberti Cipher and Vigenere square. Ari and I worked late into the night as Collin taught us how to decode the message. At some point August joined us and “helped” mostly by sitting at the desk complaining about various students in his class. He was entertaining, though, and helped the work go faster. Rory came in too but was of no help at all; he kept asking Collin to “explain the square thing again”; Ari eventually got mad and kicked him out of the study. We made headway slowly, but the more I worked out the system, the better I understood the process.

When we went to bed that night
, I put my head on Ari’s chest and ran my fingers through the tiny little hairs he had there. I told Ari about Dr. Spruce and his connection with the Kakos and his relationship with my mother.

“I used to think my mother loved him, that she was eager for me to move on so they could have a life of their own together. But the last time I talked to her she seemed happy he was dead.”

“What does that mean? I thought they died in the same accident.”

“They did.”

“Well how on Earth would you have talked to her then, Ava?”

“She said things to me in my dreams. When I was in the hospital… strange things. The memories are fuzzy and weird but she asked if Spruce died and was happy when I confirmed that he had.”

“Oh, Baby.” Ari held me and stroked my hair, nuzzling my face to his warm chest. “Someday this will all be over, I promise.”

****

I got up early on Saturday morning, made a pot of coffee, and got back to work. Ari joined me an hour or so later.

“Did you find anything?” he asked, taking a sip out of my coffee cup.

“Not really, but look at this,” I said and slid the journal across the desk at him.

“Look at the back page,” I told him, nodding my chin at the book.

He stared at the back cover for a long time before he finally spoke.

“Is that your tattoo?”

“Mmm hmm.” My mom had doodled all over the inside of the back cover. One of her drawings was an almost perfect small-scale replica of my bird tattoo. Next to it, she had also sketched six tally marks. Five of them were two inches long just like mine, and then the sixth one was longer and jagged.

“Look in the corner,” I said to him quietly.

There were three dates written in perfect handwriting in the upper right hand corner: 09/03/2011; 08/04/2012; 10/07/2013. “The first is the day my mother died; the second is the day we got married.”

“And the third?” Ari asked a bit shaky.

“I don’t know,” I said, biting the inside of my lip. “We have about ten months to find out.”

Ari flipped the page; on the other side were numerous tally marks. In fact, my mother had added tally marks all throughout the journal, in the margins and in corners.

Ari looked down at them and then back to me. “You do this, too.”

I blinked at him.

“I’ve seen you do it. Sometimes I don’t think you realize that you are making the marks but you do, not as much as you used to though. Whenever you have a pen and paper in your hand you make tally marks.”

“Force of habit, I suppose.”

“That’s an odd habit.”

“Mmm.” I agreed. “I started to make
tally marks when I was young; when I first began to dream the scissor dream. It scared me when I was little; people screaming, pleading with me behind closed doors, people crying in obvious pain. I began to tally up how often I would have the dream. When I moved from Chicago to California, I had to pack my bedroom up and I found pages and pages covered with tallies.” I shrugged.

Ari frowned at me. “We will figure this whole thing out, Ava. It won
’t be like this forever.”

“I know.” I nodded and then got back to work.

Ari and I spent the rest of the morning in the study and uncovered a few actual words, but we didn’t know where to put them in the progression of the note.

At four thirty, Ari stood up.

“We have to get moving, Ava.”

“Why, what are you talking about?”

“We have to be in L.A. at eight. It takes over an hour to get there and you take ages to get ready.”

“L.A?” I said scrunching my nose.

Ari gave me a small smile.

“Margaux,” he said, reminding me of her silly dinner party.

“We’re still going to that?”

“We have to, Ava. I
’m sorry, there is no way I can cancel.”

He wiggled his fingers, I took his hand, and he pulled me to my feet. We walked back to the bedroom and I threw open the closet doors.

“I have no idea of what to wear.”

“Um…” Ari said, rubbing the stubble on his face, “Margaux sent home a dress from her new line that she really wants you to wear tonight.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said in an exasperated tone.

“I
’m not, but it’s really pretty, Ava; you’ll like it, so don’t freak out. I left it in the car.”

He went to get the dress and I climbed into the shower and let the hot water run down my back. I heard the bathroom door open a few minutes later. My stomach did little somersaults and a giggle escaped my lips as the shower doors opened.

Chapter 19

Margaux

I won
’t lie. The dress Margaux sent home really was beautiful. It was tight and snug against my body. The color was a soft, dusty rose and the fabric was lace with a creamy silk sheath underneath. The shoes she sent along with the dress were Louboutin, much higher than I like to wear but totally typical of Margaux. I made an effort to look my best. I didn’t care about impressing Margaux or her friends, but this command appearance was in the interest of Ari’s job after all, and it mattered to him.

He came to fetch me at six thirty and he looked absolutely stunning in a sleek, dark suit. I wrapped a fist around his tie and he pulled me in for a lingering kiss.

“Do you think we could be a few minutes late?” I teased and tugged at the button on his dinner jacket.

Ari bit his lip while he thought about my proposition.

“It’s never just a few minutes when it comes to the two of us, Ava. If anyone other than Margaux were hosting this deal, I would – but I am afraid she might kill us if we were late.” He looked me up and down with a salacious smile. “I love you in this dress. I am very much looking forward to peeling it off of you as soon as we get home…maybe sooner.”

I did my best at suppressing the small fire that i
gnited in the pit of my stomach and we left our room and headed into the main part of the house. Collin had my mother’s journal propped up on his knee in the living room while August, Julia and Rory sat on the couch and watched an action movie on TV. Ari told them all we were heading out to a party and would be home late. No one really paid him any attention and we slipped out of the house.

We arrived at Margaux
’s mansion of a home and as soon as we walked through the door, she glided across the floor and wrapped me up in a delicate hug, then kissed me on the cheek.

“Oh, Ava, darling, I have missed you so much,” she purred. I nearly gagged and gave her a look like she was nuts. She linked her arm through mine and led me into the main part of the house, as if I had never been there before. I shot Ari a nasty look and he gave me a small laugh.

Margaux led us down a corridor, passed the dining room and back to the sitting room where the rest of her guests had gathered. She handed each of us a glass of wine and then cleared her throat. There must have been twelve other people there and they gave Margaux their full, undivided attention as she introduced me.

“This is my precious granddaughter, Ava,” she said sweetly, “and of course you know her genius husband, Ari.”

I gave the room a small wave and a smile and then peeled my arm away from Margaux and linked it with Ari’s. Margaux gave a frilly laugh, batted her eyelashes and said, “young love,” and the whole room giggled with her. I suppressed an eye roll and bit my tongue to keep back a nasty remark. Ari gave my arm a squeeze and we walked into the room together.

As usual, Ari was the center of attention. Everyone wanted a minute of his time, and we spent the first hour smiling politely as people took turns peppering him with questions and stories. I was actually relieved when Margaux announced dinner was ready to be served in the dining room. My feet hurt and I was thirsty. I had hopes of getting a glass of water. I wondered idly if the devil drinks water.

Ari and I hung back for a moment as the room cleared.

“This isn
’t so bad, huh?” he asked.

“I guess not, Ari, but Margaux is acting so strange.”

“She seems to be acting fine to me, Ava. She is pleased to see you.”

“You don
’t know her like I do; she’s gone nuts.”

He kissed me on the forehead and we were interrupted by Margaux.

“Coming darlings?”

Ari and I followed her out of the sitting room and back down into her spacious and elegant dining room. If someone had told me Martha Stewart had organized this dinner party, I would have believed it. Everything was perfection. The dining room table was set formally and quite stylishly. The centerpieces were red and white amaryllis in clear glass vases. Flickers of candlelight gleamed against the glass and danced around the room, bouncing off the chandelier and back again.

For dinner, Margaux served a herb salad with feta followed by Mediterranean chicken on rice pilaf. The final course, dessert, was apricot-fig compote. Dessert-wine glasses were brought in for the peach and apricot hints of a decadent riesling to go with it. I was sure Margaux had had no hand in the decorations or the meal other than the ordering around of several very scared people.

“Ava,” a woman across the table said, raising her voice a little to get my attention, “that
’s a beautiful dress you’re wearing.”

“Thank you; it
’s one of Margaux’s designs actually.”

Everyone in the room turned to look at the dress and then turned to Margaux.

“Is that true, Margaux?” The woman asked. “I don’t remember ever having seen it.”

“No, I
’m lying,” I said under my breath with an over-exaggerated eye roll. Ari put his hand on my knee and squeezed… hard.

Margaux cleared her throat and had a very pleased look on her face that made me want to puke.

“Why yes...I brought the dress out for the new spring line; I had Ava in mind when I designed it, like always. Tonight is the dress’s debut. We have plans of it being on the cover of
Vogue
.”

Oohs and ahhs erupted from the group of people and I forced a smile. They all carried on about the new spring line for a few minutes, giving me a reprieve from attention.

“Did you know that?” I side whispered to Ari through clenched teeth.

“What, about the dress?” he whispered back.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you wouldn
’t have worn the dress if I had told you. And you look lovely in it.”

And with that comment my reprieve from the group
’s conversation ended. Margaux fixed me with her gaze and said, “Ava, I thought I might put you to work for a little bit this evening. I am sure you wouldn’t mind entertaining us with a song or two on the piano.”

I opened my mouth wide to protest, but she cut me off
, stopping me from speaking.

“Ava is a classically trained pianist. She
’s brilliant.”

“Margaux, I can
’t…”

She held her hand up to stop me, “Ava, I insist.”

I ground my teeth, annoyed and pushed my food around with my fork for the rest of dinner. I no longer enjoyed playing the piano. I wasn’t as good as used to be. My fingers on my left hand were still too slow thanks to the nerve damage No. 6 inflected when he sliced open my wrist.

We all got up,
I followed Margaux into her giant foyer and I took a seat at her piano.

“Do you have any requests?” I asked her politely.

“You know what I like,” she said with a tight smile, and there was a wicked gleam in her cold, dark eyes.

I looked at Ari out of the corner of my eye and he mouthed a small, “Sorry.”

I gave him a look that could kill and began to play. Margaux loved Beethoven so I started playing “Moonlight Sonata” and then moved into a few of his other pieces until my hand began to tighten and my fingers started to cramp. Once I finished, I stood up and walked over to Ari’s side. He kissed me sweetly and I peered over at Margaux. She was dabbing tears from her eyes. And, amazingly, they weren’t the phony ones I had seen her pretend to wipe away so often before. She appeared to be genuinely sad and upset over something. I gave Ari’s arm a squeeze and pulled him aside out of earshot from the rest of the guests.

“We have got to get out of here,” I whispered.

“OK, we will soon, I promise.”

“Ava, darling,” Margaux called for me. I turned around and gave her an acknowledging smile.

“Darling, come here for a moment.”

Ugh!

I kept hold of Ari’s hand and we walked back across the room towards Margaux. One of her guests, whose name I was fairly sure was Yvette, turned without looking and walked straight into me, causing her full glass of after-dinner port to spill down the front of my dress. I let out an audible gasp in shock, looked down, and saw I was completely soaked and the dress was ruined. Yvette sputtered out apologies as people dashed towards us to pat me with napkins.

“Oh, Ava!” Margaux cried. “Quickly, go up to my room and change. I have plenty of things in my closet you can change into.”

“No Margaux, I’m fine,” I said, thinking I could use my wet dress as an excuse to leave. “Ari can just take me home.”

“Nonsense, Ava, you can
’t drive home like that. Go change now.”

I knew not to argue and grumbled, “I
’ll be right back,” to Ari as I turned around to head up the giant staircase that led to Margaux’s lair.

Her room was massive and very plush. It was also very private. I had only been in Margaux
’s room one other time, in the dream when I cut Perry’s thread.

I took in a
ll of the photos she had out on display. All of them contained Margaux, Perry and my mom, when my mom was a little girl. A few of them included me. Family shots of all kinds covered the bureau and the walls and Margaux looked lovingly at my mom in each one. She seemed to be a completely different person from the cold, distanced woman I knew. Her smile looked genuine and her eyes even looked to be a different color. The cold, dark look I had noted at the dinner was gone and in its place were eyes of a light, soft blue.

I picked a photo up of my mom standing with me and holding my hand. I remembered the day perfectly. I had been eight years old and Perry had come to visit us in Montréal for my birthday. He had taken this picture of the two of us in the garden, right before he had to get on his flight back home. I set the photo down, walked across the floor, passed Margaux
’s king-sized sleigh bed, and stopped in front of her dressing table. Her jewelry, including her wedding ring and the necklace I had gotten her for Christmas last year, was lying there. I picked up her ring and twirled it around in my fingers, gazing at it for a moment before putting it back down.

A glass plate on top of the vanity held various perfumes. I opened a bottle of “
baio
for Women” and was overwhelmed by the delicate, warm smell of lilac and vanilla. I tilted my head to the side trying to place the scent. It was so familiar. Suddenly, the smell made my stomach heave with nausea. I suppressed a gag reflex, let out a cough and set the perfume down.

I turned towards Margaux
’s walk-in closet, in a hurry to get the hell out of Margaux’s creepy room.

At back of the closet, I found her dresses hanging neatly in a row. Below the dresses, lined up in order of color, were her shoes. The collection was pretty impressive – rows and rows of Jimmy Choo, Louboutin and Manolo Blahniks – and in the corner all by themselves, a pair of Nikes. How odd for Margaux
’s closet. I had never seen her in shoes that weren’t tall and pointy. I got on my knees and picked one of the Nikes up, turning it around in my hand. There was a bright yellow swoosh on it.

The Nike dropped to the floor from my shaking hands. My pulse quickened and panic began rise in my chest.
To keep from passing out, I had to remind myself to breathe.

“Ava?”

My head snapped up at the sound of Ari calling my name. My jaw was slack and my eyes were beginning to pool with tears.

“Ava Baby, what
’s taking you so long? Just grab a dress and put it on.”

“Ari, it
’s her. No. 7 -- it’s Margaux.”

“Don
’t be ridiculous, Ava.”

Ari rolled his eyes at me as if I were being overly dramatic.

“I’m serious, Ari. I know she’s the one. She had a burn on her arm at the same time your dad’s study was set on fire. She is the one who stitched me back up after No. 6 cut my wrist. I could smell her perfume, the kind
baio
sells, I could smell it in the basement when I came to. I know she was there.”

I picked
up the Nike.

“She was wearing these when I cut the thread of No. 6.”

“Ava,” Ari said quietly, letting his hands drop to his sides. “Everyone has a pair of Nikes in their closet,
baio
is the most popular perfume available, of course Margaux would wear it, she designed it.”

“You don
’t believe me do you? I’m not lying, Ari. I wouldn’t accuse her if I didn’t believe it.”

I was hurt that he didn
’t trust me, but I had brought Ari’s lack of trust in me on myself.

He looked at me for a moment and let out a sigh.

“No, I do believe you, Ava. If you say Margaux is involved with the Kakos, then I believe you.” I didn’t hear much conviction in his voice as he made his statement. He came to my side and helped me up off the closet floor.

“If you really think Margaux is No. 7, then what are you going to do about it?” he asked.