The Treasure Box (10 page)

This barn. Mam and Colin. Even Cathleen, if she were pressed to admit it. This was the only world she had ever known, and now, in less than a week, she would step onto the deck of a steamship and leave it behind forever.

And the memories! Would she leave them behind, too?

She scooted over toward the wall, pried up a loose board in the floor, and retrieved Sophie's Treasure Box from its hiding place.

Even after ten years, she still thought of the box as Sophie's, not her own. And yet it held her treasures—Queen Titania, the ragged handkerchief doll. A tatted lace collar Mam had made for her birthday. A fragrant perfume sachet that had once belonged to her grandmother. A dog-eared likeness of the family Colin had drawn for her during his first year in school. A hammered brass heart Sophie's father Jacob had given to her on the first anniversary of her best friend's death.

These were her treasures—memories. Mementos from the people she loved. Not the two hundred pounds that lay in a small burlap bag at the bottom of the box.

Rachel closed the box and cradled it in her lap, stroking the little dragon at the edge of the sea, tracing with one finger the outline of America. The Land of Promise. And soon, her home.

She shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the barn wall, and Sophie's face materialized behind her eyelids. Sophie as she had been—before the river, before the pneumonia. The smile, the auburn curls, the laughing brown eyes.

Remember me
, she had said right before she died.
Remember
. . .

Well, Rachel would remember. Until the day she herself walked into the embrace of the willow-woman and heard the green song, she would never let go of the Treasure Box, never forget the friend whose brief life had meant so much to her.

Never.

The computer screen was gray and shadowed, but Vita could make out movement in the pale light of a descending half-moon.

Someone slipping behind the broad trunk of a big oak tree. The silhouette of a stone cottage with a thatched roof. The cottage door swinging open.

“Come on!” a voice hissed from behind the tree.

“It's late,” a woman's voice whispered back. “Everyone's asleep.”

“So much the better. Let's go!”

The figure moved from its hiding place and took a couple of steps toward the house. A man, shrouded in a dark overcoat, with his back toward Vita.

Vita raised an eyebrow. What was this—a midnight tryst, some secret rendezvous? Had Rachel changed her mind?

The woman closed the door behind her and tiptoed out into the clearing. It wasn't Rachel. Moonlight caught in a cascade of blonde curls, creating a reflected halo of spun silver around her head.

Vita squinted at the woman's face. The features were older, matured, but there was no mistaking that snobbish, superior expression. This was no angel. It was Cathleen. And apparently still up to the old tricks she had cultivated when she was thirteen and chasing after Rafe Dalton.

“I'd nearly decided you weren't coming,” she said as she stepped into the man's embrace.

He tipped her head back and lowered his mouth to hers in a hungering kiss. “My sweet vixen,” he murmured. “How could any man stay away from you?”

She laughed softly. “Before long, you won't have to.”

10
THE UNMARKED WAY

A
ll morning, while she showered, dressed, and prepared her breakfast, Vita couldn't get her mind to clear. She kept thinking about Sophie and Rachel and Derrick Knight. About Gordon and Hattie and Mary Kate. Time moved around her like a river of silt, a fluid, unpredictable motion that sometimes stood still and sometimes rushed by at an astonishing pace.

Rationally Vita knew it had been five days since she first discovered the Treasure Box program, but based purely on perception, it could have been five minutes or five years. A flick of an eyelash or a lifetime.

For more than an hour now she had been sitting at the kitchen table, drifting, wandering in a maze of memories. Seeing Hattie's ruined face and Gordon's handsome one. The lost friend and the lost love.

But life is mostly about losses, isn't it?
Vita thought. A single, seemingly insignificant choice, freely made or determined by another, inevitably eliminated a myriad of other options. Decisions made in a split second changed the course of destiny for all time. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Which one to take? The clear, well-traveled path or the overgrown and unmarked way?

Frost had elected “the one less traveled by” and claimed that his choice “made all the difference.” But he
didn't
say, Vita noted with a perverse kind of pleasure, whether that difference was positive or negative. Perhaps he didn't know. Perhaps he was unable— or unwilling—to confront the alternatives. Maybe the great and insightful poet, like the rest of humanity, simply muddled along, taking what lay before him and haunted by a vague suspicion that once he had chosen—either way—it would forever alter the course of his life.

What would have happened, Vita wondered, if Hattie Parker had allowed that terrible accident to redirect her life—or never gotten into the car in the first place? Would Vita and Hattie still be best friends, sharing their grown-up secrets and struggles as they had shared their childhood fantasies? What if Gordon Locke hadn't looked into Mary Kate's eyes and discovered there what he found lacking in Vita? Would Vita now be Gordon's wife, mother to Gordy and Mary V—or children very much like them?

What if Vita herself had made different choices?

Vita shook her head and gazed out the kitchen window. Spring, with its abundant rains and sunshine, had resurrected the purple morning glories, and they spread with abandon up the old iron trellis and across the window sill. A few of them had even caught hold of the screen and continued their upward climb, like Jack's beanstalk, toward the sky. Vibrant, colorful show-offs in the morning, and by afternoon, retiring, antisocial hermits.

Maybe the best you could hope for in life, Vita mused, was to be like the morning glories. Latch onto whatever trellis will hold you, take the sun when you can get it, and don't expect the grandeur to last forever.

The starry night on Vita's computer monitor went through its now-familiar metamorphosis, transforming itself into a brilliant sunlit afternoon. The toll of a bell drifted on the bright air as dozens of villagers in their Sunday finery made their way toward a small parish church situated on a green knoll at the edge of town. A carriage drawn by two bay horses stood tethered at one side of the stone walkway. Over the carved wood lintel of the nave door, a festoon of white flowers nodded gently in the breeze.

Rachel's wedding day.

Ordinarily, Vita didn't care much for weddings; they brought out her cynical side and left her wondering how long the union would last. But this wedding was different. Rachel had lost so much in her young life—and now, finally, something good was happening for her. She and Derrick Knight would take vows of lifetime love and fidelity, surrounded by their friends and family, and then depart into the sunset toward a new life in a new land.

The clear blue sky with its scattering of tiny clouds made

Vita think of an ocean, studded with whitecaps and merging into the horizon. What an adventure it would be, to board that ship and sail past the curve of the earth on the crest of a surging wave.

She could imagine herself standing at the prow of a great clipper ship with the wind at her back and the world spread out before her, watching as the massive carved figurehead sent a shower of mist over the bow. She could feel the rough wood of the deck rail, taste the salt spray, smell the briny tang of the sea, hear the raucous call of gray and white gulls circling above the mast.

The church bells kept tolling, and Vita brought her attention back to the screen. Rachel and her mother now positioned themselves near the door, with Colin, in knickers and a starched white shirt, tugging at Mam's skirt. Beside them stood an older, balder, paunchier Jacob Stillwater, beaming his radiant smile down on the bride.

Vita gazed at Rachel, resplendent in a simple white dress with lace outlining the neckline and cuffs—a dress designed to show off the gleaming silver locket she wore at her throat. Her brown hair, curled on top of her head with a meandering stream of white satin ribbon running through it, accentuated her blue eyes and high cheekbones. Little Rachel—the gangly, shy, rather homely duckling, had turned into an elegant swan.

“We'll need to go in soon,” Mam said, taking Colin's hand.

“We'll be fine,” Jacob assured her. “We'll just wait here at the door until we hear the music.” He turned to Rachel. “It's a pure blessing to me, child, your asking me to walk you down the aisle. After Sophie—” He paused, and a somber look flashed across his face. “Well, you know, I never had the chance to play the proud Papa at
her
wedding. I think she'd be happy for both of us.”

Rachel let out a little sigh. “It means the world to me, too, Jacob. With my own father gone these five years now, no one but you could have made this day complete. It's a shame Sophie can't be here.”

Jacob put an arm around her. “She
is
here, Rachel. Wherever she is, she's watching.”

Rachel nodded, then turned back to her mother. “Where's Cathleen?”

Mam raised an eyebrow. “Late, as usual. She'll be along whenever she's good and ready.” She shook her head. “Like as not, she's a bit jealous, I'll wager. Her little sister marrying before herself.

But don't worry about her, Rachel. This is your day; don't let your sister spoil it for you.” She led Colin into the church.

The final peal of the parish bells echoed into silence. Inside the church, the organ sounded a solemn chord, and Jacob offered his arm to Rachel. Together they glided down the aisle toward the altar, where the rector stood with the
Book of Common Prayer
open in his hands. With perfect timing, Rachel and Jacob reached the front of the sanctuary just as the processional ended.

When the music stopped, all eyes turned toward the door at the right side of the nave that led to the vestry. This was Derrick's cue to come out of the vestry and stand before the priest next to his bride. Rachel fixed her attention on the door, anticipating her first glimpse of her husband-to-be's handsome face. How would he react when he saw her? Would he think her beautiful, the woman of his dreams? She could hardly wait to see the look in his eyes—that look of adoration, the one that never failed to kindle a flame in her.

Tonight there would be no more holding back. Tonight she would freely give herself to him, abandon herself to his desire and her own, let him discover that their love was worth waiting for.

Tonight they would be husband and wife, joined together by God for all time.

Rachel held her breath. Time seemed to stand still, but that had to be just her imagination, a product of her nervousness and excitement. Then she began to hear rustling noises behind her.

Hushed murmurs spread from pew to pew. The priest's face had gone white as his surplice. Jacob, still holding Rachel's arm, closed his eyes and moved his lips inaudibly. His usually ruddy skin took on a greenish tinge, and he looked as if he might be sick.

A minute passed. Then two. Finally Jacob pried Rachel's fingers from the sleeve of his coat, went to the vestry door, and knocked. In the quiet of the church, the sound fell on Rachel's nerves like physical blows, the ringing of hammer against spike, a crucifixion.

But no stone rolled away to reveal a resurrected bridegroom.

Jacob knocked again, then turned the handle and opened the vestry door. From nearly anywhere in the sanctuary, you could see the entirety of the small room, with neatly-pressed clerical vestments and altar cloths hanging along the walls.

It was empty. Not a sign that Derrick Knight had ever been there. Or ever would be.

Rachel lay facedown across her bed in the small anteroom of the cottage, her dress rumpled, her shoulders shaking. Clutched in her hand she held the silver locket, its chain broken. A thin red welt raised up on the back of her neck from the force of ripping it free.

“Rachel, Rachel,” Rose said helplessly, stroking her back.

“Maybe something happened to him—an accident, something . . .”

But she didn't believe it herself, so how could she possibly convince her distraught daughter?

Rachel continued to weep. Rose continued to try to comfort her—with little effect. To be left standing at the altar without a groom on what should be the happiest day of her life was the ultimate humiliation for a woman. Held up to ridicule throughout the village, and beyond. The jilted girl. The poor shamed lass whose lover scorned and betrayed her and left her to the malice of the gossips.

Tongues would wag, that much was certain. It had already begun. No longer would she be Rachel, the hard worker, the faithful daughter, the quiet, sensitive one. From now till the end of her days, she would be Poor Rachel. Her tale to be told and retold, embroidered and elaborated, for the entertainment of a village that had little else to talk about.

And what of Derrick Knight? Rose Woodlea was not inclined, not in the least, to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he knew what was good for him, he'd be halfway to somewhere else by now. Somewhere far away, never to set foot in this county again.

At last Rachel's tears subsided a bit, and she sat up and swiped a hand across her face.

“Better?” Rose peered into her daughter's eyes.

Rachel nodded. “But why would he—how could he—” Her eyes filled up again. “I thought he loved me!”

Rose's words came out on a sigh. “Men can be unpredictable creatures, that's certain. But I do know one thing: Derrick Knight understands less about love than—than Biscuit the cow!”

Rachel smiled halfheartedly. “But why, then, does it hurt so?” She lay back across the bed and threw an arm over her eyes.