by Doug Welch
* * *
My mind snapped back to the present and I shook myself back to awareness. “I think we need to check that envelope.”
“I don't think I want to look.” She turned to leave the study.
I sympathized with her. Last night, after I’d read the letter, I laid awake a long time before I’d managed to sleep. I followed her and studied her expression.
Her almond shaped eyes glowed amber in the sunlight, but they still held the sadness that had engulfed both of us. She wore no makeup. Her lovely face and flawless complexion didn't need enhancement. Sex had set us apart in looks and height, but I knew I looked at a near mirror image of me.
I ran my hands through my thick, chestnut hair. “We need to talk about last night,” I said.
Alex started to cry again.
I became angry. Dad had to be insane to write that damn letter. Did he know how much he’d hurt Alex? Hurt me? Did he care? How was Mom not my mother? I loved my mother. She’d held me and stroked me when hurt and had set me free when I was well. She also taught me to respect women and treat them as equals. Why had he written it? Did he write it? And, if he didn’t write it, who did?
“Alex, Alexandra honey, listen to me,” I said. “Don‘t cry. This is bullshit. It can’t possibly be true.”
She choked back a sob. “What? Didn’t you recognize the handwriting? Why would he write something like this if it wasn't true?”
I gripped her shoulders. “Alex, ignore your head, listen to your heart. We knew Mom. Did she ever give us any reason to feel other than our mother?”
This seemed to get her attention. Her red rimmed, tear-filled eyes widened. “Really? – Really! – But, why..?”
I completed her question. “Why did he write it? Hon, we don’t know that he did write it. It looks like Dad’s writing, but maybe it’s someone else–”
She shook her head. “That’s Dad’s handwriting. I should know. While you were gone, I helped him with his research. I know his writing. Now, I’m really confused.”
I released her, hugged myself and paced around her, thinking. “Alex, we’ve got a problem, but it’s got to have an explanation. Let‘s calm down and think about this.”
I was totally clueless, but I didn’t want Alex to sense it. My mind roiled with conflicting emotions. Dad was one of those people who could have been composed on the deck of the Titanic, and who would have calmly awaited, and achieved, rescue. He’d been there when I needed him and he put the brakes on me when I had overstepped his bounds, but he didn't overpower me. He also taught me to be self-sufficient, to make my own choices in the world.
To say that I respected my father was like saying that the world orbited around the sun. His sanity and constancy was a fact that I always took for granted. He had a strange way of making problems vanish and never come back.
I stopped pacing and led her into the kitchen. We sat around the table and I caught her eyes. “Did Dad act strange before the accident? I mean, did he give any impression that he was not – uh– Dad?”
“Not that I can recall,” Alex replied. “He seemed to be the same as usual. But, you know Dad. He wouldn’t get upset in the middle of another world war.”
“The letter says that he was concerned about our safety. What does that mean?”
She looked away. “I don’t know.”
“It also says that Mom will tell us what’s going on. Did Mom say anything about this while you were here?”
She looked at the floor. “No.”
I pushed her. “Do you remember Dad acting worried? Worried about strangers?”
“No, No, No!” she yelled.
I realized I’d gone too far. “Okay, Alex, for your peace of mind, we’ve got to find out where this letter came from, and what it means.”
She snapped her head around and glowered at me. “My peace of mind or yours? Don't go macho on me, Paris.”
I sighed. “Okay –our peace of mind.”
“That’s more like it.”
Relieved by the change in her attitude, I thought for a moment. “Was there anything else in the case?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t check after I found it opened.”
I picked up the case and examined it. It seemed to be old, very old. The seams were hand-stitched with rawhide.
I reached in the case and felt back and forth through its interior. At the bottom a metallic object met my probing fingers and I removed it from the case.
It was a round medallion that seemed to be made of silver. On the face of it was a raised carving. I examined it closely. The picture, if one could call it that, was not a person, place or animal. It was hard to look at the image. It caused a strange feeling in my head. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head to clear the image from my mind.
“What is it? Let me see.” Alex grabbed for it.
I moved it out of reach. “I don’t think you’ll want to.”
“Don’t be silly, let me have it.” She leaned forward, grabbed it from my hand and looked at it. Shuddering, she dropped it on the table. “You’re right; I don’t want to touch it.”
After a moment, I tilted the open case toward the morning sun and sure enough, at the bottom, a second medallion gleaming back at me. I removed the disk from the case.
I quickly dropped it on the table. “This must be yours.”
Staring at it, she replied, “How do you know?”
I looked at it with distaste. “I don’t know how I know, but I do know that I can’t stand touching it.”
She picked up the disk. As soon as she held it, her grimace of repulsion vanished, to be replaced by a dazed expression. “You’re right. This is mine, I can feel it.”
I stared at the remaining medallion lying on the table. “I think we should put these back in the case until we know what this is all about.”
She clutched hers harder. “Why? It makes me feel better just holding it.”
I looked at her, at the way she held the medallion. “Alex, we don’t know what these medals are, nor how we seem to know which one is ours. I don’t like it. These disks could be dangerous. They’re certainly strange.”
Her eyes held a glazed look, like she stared in the distance at something I couldn’t see. “Strange, yes, but I don’t feel bad when I touch it, I feel – like – renewed, stronger, more mature, more sure of myself.”
“Let’s put them back in the case, and when we’re less influenced by them, we can talk about our problems and make plans.”
“I don’t know –”
I interrupted her. “Please, Alex, please put it back in the case.”
She clutched the medallion as though she could never let it go. As the time stretched, I feared that she would refuse and we‘d have a fight. She seemed to struggle with her feelings and then relented. “Okay, I’ll put it in the case, but you’ll have to promise me. As soon as we learn what these things are, I can have mine back.”
“Done,” I replied.
She looked puzzled. “Really, I don’t understand why you feel that you have to protect me from a piece of jewelry.”
I worried my lower lip between my teeth. “I don’t quite understand myself, Sis, but...It’s just a feeling. Humor me.”
She dropped the medallion into the case. With the medals safely back where they belonged, I thought about our next hurdle. “This could all be a sick joke, but I haven’t a clue as to why, or what it would mean if it were true. I think we need to use our brains and puzzle this out. We need information. – Two things I do know, you’re my sister who I love more than anything else, and our mother was Mother, regardless of what that damn letter says.” I had a hard time choking out the last statement.
“The letter says that we should ask Mother. Mom is –”
“Stop! I know – you don’t have to say it. Please don’t”
She wailed. “Paris. She’s dead. Our mother's gone. I’ll never see her or listen to her, or feel her hug me again. She‘s just – gone.” Then
she started to cry again.
Alex’s sobbing hurt. I felt that if she continued, I would join her. I wrapped my arms around her, held her, and let her cry. We let grief consume us until we could regain control of our emotions.
“I’m exhausted. I need a drink,” I said.
“So do I,” she said.
“There’s nothing in the house to drink.”
“Not so, Dad drinks – uh – drank wine.”
“Since when? Kentucky‘s a dry state.”
“Russell County is. Not all of Kentucky is dry. Some counties sell alcohol.”
“So where did you get –”
“Didn‘t you know? Dad’s got a wine cellar, I mean he had –”
“Don’t say it.”
She bit her lip, stared at the window for a moment and composed herself. “Okay. So, there’s a small wine cellar in the basement. Actually, it’s just a closet, but Dad –” She controlled herself again. “Dad called it his wine cellar, so the name stuck.”
“Fine, lead me to it, and we’ll unscrew a bottle.”
“Huh? Uncork, you mean, Dad liked good wines.”
Following Alex down the stairs to the basement, I thought about the improbability of a wine cellar.
When I’d lived at home, Dad was not a wine drinker. In fact, the family was relatively alcohol free. Oh sure, we’d sometimes had moments where a celebration was in order, like Dad getting a new contract for a research grant, and then there would be a glass of champagne for the adults, although not my sister or me. We had to be content with apple juice.
In Iraq, alcohol was confined to the base. To wind down from a mission or just bullshit with my men or other officers, we’d gather around a few brews, so I grew to like beer. Upon taking the engineering job in Cincinnati, I’d discovered that it was a great beer city. Several breweries were headquartered there, so I’d grown accustomed to having a beer or two after work.
After we reached the bottom of the stairs, Alex led me to the far corner of the basement. I gazed at the room in amazement. When I’d lived here, the basement had been what I imagined all basements to be, dark, gloomy and dirty. This basement was attractive and spacious. It had wood-paneled walls, and overhead fixtures provided ample light. The floor was tiled, with area rugs at strategic locations. Sited on the rugs were exercise machines and a weight lifting bench.
“Whoa. What is this? When I was home, this floor was dirt.”
“Oh, I forgot you weren’t here when Dad had it rebuilt. That's when he put in the wine cellar.”
“This must have cost a fortune. Why didn’t he ask me to do the engineering? – Doesn’t it flood when it rains?”
Alex shook her head. “No, Dad had an outside company come in. He was very closed-mouth about it. I remember a few times he and the contractor argued about the construction. He was very precise about the plans. He said that we needed it for exercise.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why. I assumed Mom wanted to keep in shape. I used it a few times to improve my upper body strength when I studied martial arts.”
I laughed. “You took martial arts?”
She looked annoyed, stepped back and crouched as though she wanted to take me on. “Yes, Aikido, and I got pretty good at it. It was to protect myself if something happened while I was traveling. You want to try me?”
I made a warding gesture and grinned.
She relaxed and gestured at the back wall. “There‘s the wine cellar.”
“Where? I don't see it.”
“It’s here against the wall.” She indicated a section of the paneled wall.
It was well concealed. I examined it. ”It’s locked.”
“I forgot. Dad keeps – uh– kept the key in his desk in the study.”
We looked at each other in silence.
“This doesn’t get easier, does it, Alex?”
“I wonder if it ever will?”
I sighed. “I think I’ve lost my urge for a drink, besides, we haven’t had breakfast. After a meal, I always think better.”
“Me too,” she said.
“Let’s go eat.”
We returned to the kitchen. We were both good cooks, and we choreographed our moves in the kitchen seemingly by instinct. It wasn’t a typical country feast, just some poached eggs, coffee and toast with butter. Country breakfasts tended to be rich and hearty with delicious fatty foods. I didn’t think either of us had that kind of appetite. We sat down and ate our meal.
“What do we do now?” Alex asked, as she buttered her toast.
“About the letter? Forget it. At least for now, until we can sort out all the other problems, pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I can’t do that.”
I paused with a bite of egg near my mouth. “I know. Neither can I.”
“Don't you want to know? Do you want this to hang over us the rest of our lives?”
Resigned to the inevitable, I sighed. “You're right. I have to know.”
“What about the list mentioned in the letter?” Alex said.”
I hadn’t thought about it. “You opened the envelope. Wasn’t it there?”
Alex shook her head. “I didn’t check.”
“I’ll look.” I went back to the study, picked up all the papers that had been removed from the case, including the envelope, and took them back to the kitchen. I opened the large manila envelope and checked inside. “More pages.”
She waved the letter away. “Read them.”
“It’s in Dad’s handwriting.” I read it aloud.
The medallions are yours. I had them made to order. You will each know which one is your personal Fetish. You must wear them. This is for your own safety. They cannot harm you if you wear them.
“It’s followed by a list of addresses, two pages worth,” I said.
“Okay. This is becoming irritating. Why the hell did he call these medallions a 'fetish'?”
“That’s ‘Fetish’ with a capital ‘F’.”
“Damn it. Okay, 'Fetish', with a capital F. Why a 'Fetish', and what the hell does he mean by they? – The medallions? – Or some other 'they'?”
“Maybe it was a typo. Calm down, Sis, we’ll figure this out.” I made a mental note to look up the meaning of the word in the computer. “I suppose he felt that Mom would tell us.”
Alex bit her lip. “But...she’s not here to tell us anything,”
“Well, at least, I guess you can play with your medallion, or fetish– or whatever it is.”
She leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve changed my mind. If we plan to wear these things, I’m going to get some jewelers bags and put the medals in them. I’ll also buy some gold chains tomorrow, and since there isn’t any hole in the metal to hook a chain to, I’ll see if there is something that can be made to encase them.”
“A little bit of an overkill, but I guess it’s a plan.” I thought for a moment. “You know, if Dad was concerned that we were in danger, as the letter says, maybe the accident wasn't an accident at all.”
“What? You mean...?”
I stared at her. “I mean maybe it was meant to look like an accident.”
Alex frowned. “Now you're getting paranoid.”
I shrugged. “Maybe...I want to look at the accident report. The sheriff offered to give me a copy, but with the funeral and all the rest, we were too busy. And to be honest, I really didn’t want to see it.” I rubbed my chin feeling a little stubble. “Now, I think it would be wise to do so. I never thought about it before, but Dad was a very careful driver. It would take a lot to force him off of the road.”
Her expression changed and her eyes narrowed. “You’re right. He would never drive a country road at high speeds. That Volvo he owned was as safe as he could make it, and he kept it in prime mechanical shape.”
I nodded. “I know. We need more time. I want to call the company tomorrow and extend my bereavement leave. I’d planned to head back to Covington next week, but I think I’ll stay a little longer to see w
hat I can find.” I thought about the list of things we’d need to do. “For one thing, we need to have some idea of what the names on that list mean, and where to find them.”
“Well, I don’t have any place to be,” Alex said. “Remember, I was planning to start school. I’ll check the list at the county office.”
I felt my mission-face slip into place. “Right, we have our marching orders. I need to get more sleep, and I suggest you do the same. Then we'll get to work on that stuff in Dad's study.”
“Paris, you’re sounding like an Army officer again.”
Embarrassed at being caught out, I retorted, “Not.”
She grinned “Are too!”
It warmed me to see her almost cheerful again. “Seriously, I want to see if we can find anything in that pile in the room that will give some clue as to who our parents were. After that, we‘ll have dinner at the steak house.”
“Done. Sleep and then work.”
