Gilda's Locket (5 page)

She didn’t bother with dinner, didn’t bother
in fact with anything other than slipping on a night dress, clean
this time, and then putting the picture back into place inside the
locket. Climbing into the bed with a resolve she hadn’t felt in
years, she snatched up the bottle of pills and the newly refilled
glass of water.

She had learned her lesson. It wasn’t worth
taking any more chances. The unending night before was all she
needed to recall, to know for a certainty that this was all she had
left. And if this picture wasn’t true bliss, then so be it. She
would settle for happiness. She knew better than to be greedy, knew
better than to expect more. Happiness was all a person deserved,
anything more was icing on the cake. She’d take her cake, without
icing if necessary.

Minutes later she was sprawled on the bed,
deeply asleep, the locket clutched to her bosom.

“Mr. Butler,” the Medical Examiner greeted
the forty-something year old man, shaking his hand resolutely. “I
am so very sorry to have to meet you this way. Come, let’s head
into my office and have a seat. I understand you wanted to review
the findings of my report. Certainly, I’ll be glad to answer any
questions you may have.”

“Thank you,” Scott’s answer was terse, which
was to be expected. As the ME understood it, this was the last
existing family member the man had. He sat silently behind his
desk, watching and waiting quietly as Mr. Butler read every word of
the report, even rescanning one or two of the pages.

“So that’s it then? A suicide?”

Put as bluntly as it had been, the ME was
unable to form words for a moment. Then finally, “Well, if you read
my findings you’ll see that she was suffering from cancer. It is my
supposition that she was aware of the disease and wished to avoid
the suffering she knew was bound to occur. I’ve been informed that
your father died of cancer?”

“Pancreatic.”

The ME cleared his throat. “Yes, and I
understand your sister had a similar disease?”

“Childhood leukemia.”

Startled by the stark clarity in which the
information was delivered, the ME took a minute to consider how to
proceed. “Yes, well, one can only assume, having firsthand
knowledge of these types of diseases, your mother must have been
trying to avoid the same for herself. And, I would venture to say,
an attempt to save you from having to watch her wither away.”
Somehow the ME could not picture this man sitting vigil by his
mother’s bedside.

“At any rate, from what we’ve been able to
gather, she’d been calling in sick the last week or so to work.
Only returned one day, the day before she, er, passed. That’s not
unusual for suicides. Tying up loose ends so to speak. She may have
wanted to see her coworkers one last time. And judging by the
condition of the home, she had been suffering from extreme
depression, hadn’t been taking calls, hadn’t been keeping house.
Have you been in the home yet?”

Scott nodded.

“Well, you’ve seen the photo albums then I
suppose?”

He nodded again.

The ME was completely out of his realm.
Sometimes the dead were so much easier to deal with than the
living.

“Then the only thing that remains is deciding
what to do with the, er, the, remains.”

“I’ve already contacted the funeral home.
They’ll be here to pick up the body today.”

'The body.' It was his mother.

“Is there anything else then? Anything I need
to sign?”

The ME watched him for a moment. Some
malevolent force rose in him for a moment, and for that single
moment he reconsidered his original decision. But ultimately
integrity won out, and regardless of whether he was doing the right
thing, he slid open his desk drawer.

“Only this,” he said as he passed the locket
over to the son.

“What’s this?”

The ME did not answer since it seemed to be
self-evident. He watched as the man turned it over in his hand,
once, twice, three times; then opened the locket peering at the
picture inside.

The ME knew, from having looked at it
earlier, and recognizing the features on the woman’s face, drawn
and ill as she may have been, her younger self was still
recognizable in the photograph. Just as the young boy was
recognizable as the man he had become, the man now sitting across
the desk from him.

Was it just his imagination, or was there a
mist up 'til now nonexistent creeping into the man’s eyes?

“I’ve never seen this before,” the man
murmured to himself, as if completely unaware of the audience he
had. “I wonder where this came from?”

The ME took the chance to respond, “She was
holding it tightly in her hand when they brought her here. I
thought you may want it.”

The spell was broken as soon as he spoke, and
he almost regretted his words. He never could be sure if the
emotion had really been there, or he had only imagined it. Whatever
the case, Mr. Butler quickly stood, and even more quickly took his
leave. The ME sat back in his chair shaking his head. Thank God his
kids hadn’t grown up to be like that. At least, he liked to think
so anyway.

Somewhere, across town, asleep in the little
bedroom over his shop, an old man lay, silently slumbering, his
eyes twitching rapidly beneath his lids, a cracked locket, clutched
tightly in his gnarled, worn hands. If he felt an ounce of guilt
over his perfidity, it didn’t show. It was wretched to trick an old
lady the way he had, though he hadn’t done it out of a sense of
malice, but rather desperation, When he had stumbled upon the
secret of the locket the night before, accidentally falling asleep
while he had been trying to repair it (and he had only slipped the
picture of his lovely Lydia inside in order to see her beautiful
face framed in that ornate silver locket) he had been hard pressed
to give it up. It had been a simple matter, finding a locket
through all his trunks filled with old jewels and gems, family
heirlooms from families long since dead. He had managed to find one
that matched relatively closely, though if the old lady hadn’t been
so ill and so drugged up she might have caught on to the swap. His
guilt had forced him to under-charge her for the cost of the
“repair,” a repair he had in essence done for himself. And not long
after sending her on her way, he had locked up the shop and headed
off to bed, to some of the pleasantest dreams he’d ever
experienced.

###

About the
Author:

T. L. Ingham was born and raised in upstate
New York, before short stints in Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Illinois, and then finally, Indiana where she lives today, residing
with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of the blog
'Did This Really Just Happen?' at
http://tlingham.blogspot.com/

She can be reached at
http://tlingham.webs.com/
and
http://www.facebook.com/tl.ingham.1

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/TLIngham

Sneak Peek at
The Dradon Project, a full length novel.

Forward

March 20, 2011

The First Day of Spring

Welcome to Knollsville. Knolls County,
Indiana, smack dab in the middle of Cass and White counties. You
can find it traveling west on US-24 heading for Monticello. A
handful of other small towns just like it make up the county, towns
like Henrietta, Humphrey, and Coretta; all established by the same
man over one hundred years ago. Hiram Knolls the first, who named
the county and the towns within after himself, his wife, and two of
his children. It was his own private dynasty. Back then, Hiram was
a man of big dreams and even bigger means. Surrounded by vast acres
of rich, fertile farmland and strategically placed en route to
bigger cities like Monticello, Knollsville was the county seat of
an up and coming metropolis, an illustrious empire. Now you can’t
even find it on a map.

But you didn’t come here for a history
lesson. So let me just get you started.

Name’s Abigail Simms, but most folks just
call me Abby. I got a few minutes free to show you around, and the
weather’s cooperating, which is something you never can quite be
sure of hereabouts. But this early spring thaw is a welcome thing
after the freezing winter we had, so I won’t complain. Lord knows,
it won’t last. Never does.

The first thing you’ll notice when you head
into Knollsville, aside from the weatherworn sign (the red paint’s
so chipped you can barely read the words), are the two rusty silos
and the deserted grain elevators less than a quarter of a mile from
where US 24 turns into Main Street. They’ve been growing rusty for
years now, and they, along with those large stone and brick
buildings over yonder, haven’t been used for years. Almost as long
as I’ve been here anyway.

The considerable bulk of those buildings
casts a shadow over the entire town, making it seem downright
gloomy and maybe even a bit unfriendly. Well, on the one hand, you
would be right. Knollsville is a gloomy town, and we ain’t always
known for our friendliness. But the shadow don’t come from those
deserted buildings. Now, don’t get me wrong. There
is
a
shadow. But it ain’t from there. It comes from someplace a little
bit deeper in town. And, I guess, someplace a little bit deeper in
some of us in town. But we’ll get to that later; right now I just
want to get you acquainted.

Knollsville, now a bleak little run-down
town to even the most forgiving of eyes, had a second run at
distinction in the late seventies to early eighties, thanks in
large part to Hiram’s namesake (now on the fourth run), who owned
and operated three booming businesses. The local agriculture- corn
and soybeans to be exact- was harvested and processed here, helping
to develop an impressive trucking facility. And then there was a
thriving construction company beyond that. These vacant, ramshackle
buildings speckled about town are all that’s left of them. The
trucking company and construction company (still owned by the same
man) have long since moved on. Now they’re a stone’s throw from
Monticello, where presumably business is better. And while the corn
and soybeans still thrive in the surrounding fields, the fields
have been sold off to multi-million dollar corporations and the
harvests are shipped elsewhere to be processed and sold.

Over the years, a few other businesses have
tried to gain a foothold, but none have succeeded, finding
Knollsville too quiet, too small, and too far out of the way. It’s
truly a wonder that Knollsville isn’t a complete ghost town. And it
would be if folks could afford to desert homes they owned outright
to move away and start over. But, of course, most folks can’t, and
so they stay. Ghost town status is inevitable though. Eventually
the children hereabouts will be grown and they’ll move away to
greener pastures, and the folks living here now will all die off.
Nature’s course, I suppose, but sad. Meanwhile, those of us who’ve
been here the longest, hold down the fort.

For now, small, still mostly occupied homes
line both sides of the street, intermingling with the few
businesses that remain open against all odds. The buildings vary in
ages, from older homes built somewhere around the turn of the
century, to the newest, built as late as the early seventies. Many
of these homes have had renovations, slip-shod as they may be, and
the once box-shaped houses, now display angular jut-outs where
additional rooms have been added. There’s a good example of one
right there, old Carl Radner’s house. He and his wife just kept
having babies, almost like they weren’t sure where they was coming
from, and each additional baby marked a new jut-out on the house
where Carl built another room. If Mother Nature hadn’t stopped them
they just might be living in the Taj Mahal. We got to keep moving
though, otherwise I could stand around all day long passing on the
town’s best gossip and we wouldn’t get anywhere.

As we make our way down the road, you’ll
notice there are no stop lights or stop signs on the main drag,
just a long, narrow, two lane road cutting a perfectly straight
line right through the center of town. A long abandoned set of
railroad tracks are the only thing that interrupts it. Most of the
businesses in town can be found on this highway, including the
diner. Abby’s Diner. I’d call it the most interesting place in
town, and not just 'cause I own it. It’s the one location in town
where practically everyone shows up at least once a month, so
pretty much anything that’s going on, I get to hear about it sooner
or later.

Just down the way, on the opposite side of
the street, there's a two story home that has become the local
newspaper, post office, and a lending library all rolled into one.
Across the street is the hardware store, owned and operated by the
mayor. A little further down there's the sewing and craft store
owned by the same man, but run by his wife. Back about two miles
behind where the “Welcome to Knollsville- Founded 1886- Population
949,” sign stands peeling its paint, is the local vet’s office. His
wife also happens to be the local doctor, though she does most of
her doctoring in Monticello now. Can’t blame her, that’s where the
money is. But she’s a charitable sort, so she keeps her office open
twice a week here in town.

All the streets, if you haven’t noticed
already, are named for trees: Elm, Oak, Maple, Hemlock, Beech,
Birch, Poplar, Ash, Buckeye, and Walnut; we got it covered. Not
very imaginative, but then Hiram Knolls was less known for his
imagination than his money. And to be fair, money built the town,
not imagination. Anyway, on the corner of Main and Elm Street lies
the Town Hall. The county courthouse, Sheriff's department, and
county clerk and treasurer all share the same building, though you
enter the Sheriff's department from one side, and the hall and
courthouse from the other.