When Venus Fell (42 page)

“Protocol!” Bea announced. “Each to his or her own chair, dearies. Make a round of it. Starting with Min.”

The gifts were small and inventive, token presents, in keeping with family tradition. Min gave inspirational books. I handed out carefully wrapped cassette tapes. “This is a collection of pieces I’ve written during the fall,” I said. “I call them
The Cameron Suite
.”

“You wrote a symphony about us?” Isabel asked.

“No, no. To be technical, it’s a series of instrumental pieces—synthesized with backgrounds and complex tracks on my keyboard—that are thematically linked.”

“Like a John Tesh concert?” Jasper asked hopefully.

“Hmmm. Yes.”
Trust a teenager to crush you totally
, I thought, but kept my elitist opinion to myself.

“This is a treasure,” Bea said, tucking her tape in her pocket. Olivia’s eyes gleamed. She held her tape in both hands, on her lap.

Gib said nothing. I had no idea if he’d ever listened to the other tape I’d given him. His approval meant so much to me I’d rather not know.

When her turn came, Isabel stood. “Ella and I have grown so close in the months since she and Vee came here. She’s become a new sister. We’ve had so many long talks about life and men, and art and men, and children and men.” Everyone laughed. I forced a smile, thinking that Ella had more in common with Isabel than with me. “And we’ve talked a lot about spirituality. About living it, and about dealing with tragedy through faith, and about expressing faith. And so”—she gathered a stack of small, fiat parcels wrapped in gold paper and bows—“here are some new paintings of mine. Thank you, Ella, for inspiring them.”

Angels. When I pulled the gilded paper off my gift I looked down at a fierce blue-and-white-robed angel with braided hair, carrying a fanged black cat and a keyboard. She
was beautiful, in the stilted folk-art style that had become popular.

“Wow,” Carter said. “My angel is one dancing dude.” He tapped a finger on the painting. “Is that my goat, Izzy?”

“Yes,” she said cheerfully.

“Mine is sweet, and I love all the doves around her,” Ella enthused.

“Mine’s wearin’ MacCallum plaid, and an archangel she must be,” Bea proclaimed. “And look.” She held up Olivia’s painting. “Herself with a scroll and feathered pen like a razor-sharp spear.” Bea pointed next at Ruth’s angel portrait. “Why, it looks as though Ruth is pounding the clouds with a judge’s gavel.”

I laughed. Ruth snorted at me. I craned my head and peered at Gib’s gift. His angel was a crew-cut Marine in flowing Marine-blue robes, carrying a sword.

Isabel had finally found the perfect symbolism for the Cameron sanctuary, the fierce devotion to home and family. She was painting wrathful, protective, warrior angels. “Say something,” I whispered to Gib.

Gib lifted his head and nodded to his baby sister, who waited eagerly. “Good work, Sis. Semper
Fly
.”

She smiled with relief.

Finally, Ella handed out her gifts. She and Carter traded quick kisses and soft, meaningful looks. Ella slid her arm around my neck and hugged me briefly while Carter maneuvered a large box in front of me. Her eyes were teary and glowing. “You have to open yours first,” she said.

I sat there, unmoving. Everyone was looking at me with their unopened gifts propped on their laps. Gib leaned close. “Don’t look so nervous.”

I unpeeled pale silver-and-white wrappings tied with an elaborate bow in which a small white paper dove was anchored. I opened the box and found a tiny box atop mounds of tissue paper. I unwrapped that box with trembling fingers.
Inside was a small crystal grand piano. “Thank you,” I said, giving Ella a puzzled but relieved look. “It’s beautiful.”

She was crying urgently, watching my reaction. “Look through the rest of the box.”

I shoved tissue paper aside. Underneath was a small overnight bag. “Just what I needed,” I said carefully, frowning.

“It’s packed; I packed it for you,” Ella said.

“I’m going somewhere?”

“You and Gib are.”

“What?”

Gib stood. “Take your bag, Nellie, and put on your coat. We’re going to Virginia to get the rest of your Christmas present.”

Gib made mysterious phone calls when we stopped at a gas station somewhere in the rolling hills south of Richmond. We’d been on the road for five hours. He’d consumed, along the way, two hamburgers, four cups of coffee, and one long, thick cigar. I’d refused all of his offers for convenience-store food, beverages, and smokes. I wanted explanations, which were the one thing he wouldn’t give.

“We’ll be there in an hour,” he said as he slid back into the jeep. I was wearing my quilted parka, but the jeep was drafty and I was nervous. I shivered. “Don’t you think it’s time you let me know what this is about?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

“Ella knows. Just tell me, too.”

“She wants it to be a surprise. She and I agreed.”

“She knows I don’t like surprises. So why didn’t she come with us?”

“You’ll have to ask her when we get back. I don’t pretend to understand women.”

“You’ve made that obvious.”

From the pocket of his heavy canvas coat he pulled candy
bars and a packet of venison jerky. “Dried Bambi strips,” he noted drolly, offering them. “A specialty of the store.”

“I’m not hungry. I really
don’t
like surprises, Gib. And if this trip is a joke, it’s a bad one.”

“It’s not a joke. But whether you’ll like it, I can’t predict.” He briefly consulted a coffee-stained map he pulled from a thick folder of maps stuffed behind his seat, then he hotwired the ignition and clamped a stiff, dark brown section of jerky between his teeth.

And on we went.

It was late afternoon. The sky had clouded. The Richmond-area radio stations were predicting snow. We’d traveled along two-lane blacktop through nothing but brown, wintry farmland and forest for the past thirty miles.

I looked around anxiously as Gib turned the jeep onto a broad, unpaved road that wandered off through two pastures. A small sign by the entrance warned in large reflective letters: Restricted. No Access. No Trespassing.

“What kind of place is out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“A big one.”

He drove along the well-kept road in a cloud of gravel dust, with fenced pastures on both sides; cattle grazed at open-sided hay sheds. I still couldn’t fathom what type of warehouse existed in the gentrified Virginia farmland. We passed through a short stretch of forest until the road abruptly changed from gravel to sleek pavement. We rounded a bend and faced a towering chain-link gate with an official-looking gatehouse. Gone were gentle farm fences and pastures. Twelve-foot-tall chain link stretched threateningly as far as I could see in either direction, dotted at intervals with large No Trespassing signs that warned of armed security. In the distance were at least a dozen enormous, utilitarian gray-steel buildings.

“Where are we?” I asked in a low voice. “And how often do the inmates try to escape?”

“This is to keep people out, not in,” Gib answered calmly. A guard in an unmarked khaki uniform stepped briskly from the gatehouse. He wore a large pistol at his waist and scrutinized us seriously. Gib introduced himself and held out his driver’s license but also some kind of laminated special pass. The guard nodded pleasantly. “Mr. Cameron. All right, sir, go to Building C.”

He pushed a button, the gate whirred open, and we drove in. As Gib guided the jeep down the lanes between the buildings, their shadows slid over us. I found myself pressing my spine into the seat’s backrest. Overwhelmed, I was stiffening into resistance. “I feel small, and I don’t like it.”

“We have met the enemy,” Gib quoted with grim humor, “and I’m sorry to admit that this time the enemy is
we the people
.”

I gave him a puzzled frown. At that point a small door popped open at the end of one building and another khaki-outfitted man stepped from inside. I saw lettering on the steel facing. Building C. He waved at us, Gib nodded to him, then parked next to the door. I sat in frozen silence. Gib came around to my side and opened the passenger door. I warned quietly, “I’m not getting out until you explain why you brought me here. And what
here
is.”

We traded a look, mine searching, his troubled. He held out his hand. “It’s a U.S. government warehouse.” He closed his hand over my arm carefully. “And I brought you here to reclaim what was taken from your family.”

I felt dazed as we walked into the shadowy interior of Building C, but a small part of my brain began to buzz with the enormity of it. Around us stretched mammoth rows of heavy steel-girdered shelves; the building’s peaked steel roof seemed a mile above my head, and stacked neatly onto the
high concourses were hundreds or maybe thousands of wooden crates, each labeled with stenciled codes in black lettering. As we walked down an aisle, guided by the man who had waved us toward the warehouse, I looked at the computer bar codes pasted on each crate, as well.

Gib kept one hand under my forearm. I was shaking. I couldn’t stop listening to the military tap of our shoes on the smooth concrete floor.

“—so a couple of weeks ago we confirmed the entire series of storage crates for you, sir,” the warehouse supervisor was saying, “and I had my people pull everything and relocate the items near the loading dock for dispersal at your request.”

“That sounds fine. Thank you,” Gib responded. “Do you think you can transport everything to Tennessee before the end of the week?”

“Yes, sir. Whatever you want, sir.”

Gib Cameron, one of the President and the First Lady’s favorite Secret Service agents, had called on a few extremely high-level sources for help. “Well, here you go, sir,” our guide said, waving a hand at several dozen crates isolated in one corner. They were cordoned off with yellow tape attached to orange cones. Some of the crates were small enough to hold only a lamp or a framed picture. Others were so large they must have contained furniture. “Per your request, sir,” the supervisor said, “I had the lids removed temporarily so you could check the contents.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll be in my office near the front door when you’re finished, sir.”

“We’ll try not to take too long.”

“No hurry, sir. You’re the only business I’ve got on Christmas Day.”

Dimly I heard the sharp rhythm of the supervisor’s footsteps as he walked away. Then there was silence—only the
slight groan of a heating system keeping the air above freezing. Premium air for cherished goods. My family’s goods. Stolen by our own government.

“Are you all right?” Gib asked softly.

“I don’t know.”

“I didn’t plan to spring it on you like this. I debated whether I should tell you first, then bring you here—what would be easier.”

“I thought … the government … sold everything at auction. Years ago. Like our house.”

“No. I started checking just to see what’d been done—I didn’t really believe everything was in storage somewhere.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing on the computer. On the Internet. Research.”

“I had help. I have contacts. I have resources other people don’t have. You know that.”

“It doesn’t matter. How you found out—doesn’t matter.” I lunged for the yellow tape and jerked a section between my hands. It made me think of crime scenes. When it tore I rushed past to the nearest crate, then halted, one hand thrust out tentatively, shaking. The sides reached chest level on me. One step closer and I looked down. All I could see was a jumble of shaved-wood packing material. It was as if giant birds had made a yellow, pine-scented nest in the top of every crate.

Gib was beside me. “I could look and let you know what’s there, if you want me to.”

“No.” The packing material was soft and maddeningly thick. I stuck my hands deep into it, clawing, pushing. Finally I shoved a mound aside and touched grainy cloth over a rounded surface.

I stood on tiptoe and gazed down at the upholstery on the top of a plush armchair. “Pop’s chair,” I whispered. “He kept this in his bedroom. Ella and I would sit in this chair and watch him at his dresser. He’d knot his tie and brush his hair, and then he’d walk over to us with his cuff links in one hand,
and he’d bow. ‘My ladies, how’s about it?’ he’d say. And we’d each take a cuff link. He made a big production out of letting us pin them on for him.”

I shut my eyes. “I can see him,” I whispered helplessly. “He loved us and he loved that routine.” I looked over at Gib.

“I never realized how devoted he was to you and Ella,” he said slowly. “Or how you remember him.”

I went to another crate, flinging the curlicues of wood fiber aside. And then another crate, and another. I was panting and half crying and nearly blind with a strange mixture of grief and relief and fury. The living-room chairs, the dining-room table, the Dresden ballet-dancer lamp that had been Mom’s favorite, remnants of her fine china, knickknacks and books and linens, pots and pans—it was all there, breaking my heart. I ran to the last large crate and hoisted myself over the top of it.

“Easy, now, easy,” Gib ordered, clasping me around the waist. I crawled forward, sinking.

“They stole everything from my family!” I beat the soft padding with my fist. “Don’t tell me to take it easy! My heart is in here! My memories. How dare they take all this and keep it and lock it away in boxes! How could they?
How could they?
”

I bowed my head, sobbing. I was crouched in the top of the open crate, huddled in the wood-curlicue nest like an Easter egg in a basket, but I was beyond humiliation. I felt Gib’s hand on my hair, stroking. “I don’t know,” he admitted hoarsely. “I’m ashamed it happened to you.” I turned my face to his palm and kissed his hand.

There was a broad, flat surface deep beneath my knees. I dug down frantically. My fingertips scraped over black, glossy, glass-smooth wood. Shoving the packing material aside, I saw the dear and familiar sight of the piano I’d played from the time I was old enough to sit in Pop’s lap and reach the ivories.

I thrust my hand down and played a single, simple chord. The sound was distorted, muffled, and out of tune. But by God it was strong enough to echo off the walls of the cold steel warehouse.