SHAKESPEARE’ SECRET

by Elise Broach

  What was he doing down there? She ran toward them, shouting his name.

  The group of boys shifted slightly, looking at her. Aaron’s brother Ben and the other boy smirked, but Danny just stood where he was, sliding his skateboard back and forth with one foot.

  “Hey, Cordova,” Ben said. “Your little girlfriend wants you.”

  Hero blushed but ignored him, running up to Danny. She grabbed his arm.

  “Come on, we have to go see Mrs. Roth. I thought you’d be there already.”

  Danny looked away. “You go ahead,” he said to Hero. “I’ll catch you later.”

  “But—” Hero protested.

  “Later.” He said again, moving away. Hero hesitated. She looked over at the two boys, who were still smirking, then at Danny who had suddenly absorbed himself in picking a leaf off the wheel of his skateboard. What was going on? Why was he acting like this? Hero felt a thin, sharp prick of anger.

  “Look, don’t bother,” she said testily. “But,” she swallowed hard, “you have something I need.”

  Ben and the other boy hooted with laughter. “Oooo, you have something she needs, Cordova. Something she needs.”

  Hero turned to Ben angrily. “Shut up! Just shut up! This is none of your business.”

  Ben leaned toward her, still laughing. “What are you going to do? Hit me?”

  Hero was trembling. She clenched her fist, but Danny caught her arm. “She won’t have to. Because I will. Cut it out.”

  He was still smiling, but his eyes had that hard look, the one that reminded Hero of his father. She jerked free and walked away from the corner, her cheeks burning. When she heard Danny behind her, she walked faster.

  “Hero, wait up.”

  She wanted to keep going; she wanted to ignore him. But she realized with a start that he had called her Hero, not Netherfield. She glanced over her shoulder, quickening her pace.

  “What?”

  “Look, I...”

  “What’s wrong with you?” she hissed at him, lowering her voice. “Why are you acting so weird? We found the diamond! We have to tell Mrs. Roth.”

  He caught up to her. “The thing is ...” His voice trailed off and he looked away again.

  “What? What is it? We have to give it to her.” Hero scanned his face, unable to read his expression.

  “We can’t,” he said finally.

  “Why?”

  Hero stared at him. They were at Mrs. Roth’s now, just at the gate. Hero couldn’t stand the pleading look in his eyes. She felt a surge of panic.

  “You didn’t—you didn’t tell your dad about it, did you?”

  “No ...”

  “Then what? What’s the matter? Where’s the diamond?”

  “ I ...”

  Hero stiffened, then shivered a little. Suddenly she knew. Without his saying anything. He didn’t have it. She felt a wide pit open in her stomach, and all her nervous happiness vanished inside.

  “Danny, just tell me. Whatever it is,” Hero said slowly.

  He was still watching her with that terrible hopeful look in his eyes. “I don’t have it. I...” He swallowed.

  “I took it to the post office this morning. I sent the diamond to my mom.”

  This was so unexpected that Hero could only stare at him. “What?”

  “I sent it to my mom.”

  “But . . . why?”

  Just then the door swung open, and Mrs. Roth stepped onto the porch. She held out her arms to them. “Oh, finally, you’re here! Come in, come in. I could barely sleep last night. What happened? Did you find it? Is the Murphy diamond found at last?”

  CHAPTER

  27

  Hero looked from Danny to Mrs. Roth and back again. She couldn’t think what to do, what to say. She longed to hurtle back to last night, to that one bright moment on the porch with Danny, when the diamond had tumbled into her palm. Except this time, she wanted Mrs. Roth to be there, too.

  Danny’s cheeks were flushed, and he shifted from one foot to the other. He shot a brief, miserable glance at Hero, then stared at the ground. Hero took a deep breath. Squaring her shoulders, she walked to the porch.

  “Well, my heavens, what is it?” Mrs. Roth asked. “What’s happened?”

  Hero reached out and touched Mrs. Roth’s arm, fingering the thin silk of her sleeve.

  “We found it,” she said softly.

  Mrs. Roth’s whole face changed. So many feelings chased across it that Hero drew back, a little afraid. Mrs. Roth pressed one hand to her cheek and sat down with a shudder on the top step.

  “Oh, my dears,” she whispered. “Hero. Daniel. I can’t believe it. The Murphy diamond.”

  Danny crossed the path to the porch in a few swift steps. He stood in front of Mrs. Roth, his jaw tight. Hero saw that his sweatshirt was torn at the bottom, and he gripped it with both hands, twisting the hem.

  “Miriam, listen. We don’t have it,” he said quietly. “I ...”

  When he didn’t continue, Hero said it for him: “Danny sent it to his mother.”

  Mrs. Roth looked up, confused. “What? What do you mean? What has Daniel’s mother got to do with this?”

  “Nothing,” Danny said. “Nothing. I just ...” He crouched on the steps below her. “Listen. If we had the diamond, what could we do with it? You said yourself, Miriam, it doesn’t belong to us. I mean, I know that from my dad. Ever since Mr. Murphy collected the insurance money, the diamond belongs to them, the insurance company. We’d—well, we’d have to turn it in.”

  Mrs. Roth continued to gaze at him. “But I don’t understand. You gave it to your mother? I thought your mother was in California somewhere.”

  Hero couldn’t bear the strange, intense look on Danny’s face. It made her want to cry. She turned away, her eyes settling on the fading colors of the garden. She thought of how this place had seemed to her—lush and overflowing—when she met Mrs. Roth for the first time. Then she heard her own voice and it surprised her, how calm she sounded.

  “Danny’s mother’s an actress in L.A. At least she’s trying to be one. She doesn’t have much money.”

  “She doesn’t have any money,” Danny corrected. “You need money to make it out there. You need classes, you need the right clothes, you need . . . money. I just thought, you know, we can’t do anything with the diamond here. We’d have to give it to the police, to the insurance company. You don’t even have the necklace, so—”

  “The necklace,” Mrs. Roth said softly.

  Hero sat beside her and took her hand. “I know.”

  Danny looked at them in confusion. “What?”

  Mrs. Roth looked at Hero. “I suppose he might as well know.” She rose a little unsteadily and went into the house. She returned with the cardboard box and emptied its contents into Hero’s outstretched palm.

  “It’s Mrs. Murphy’s necklace,” Hero explained, as she lifted it, sparkling in the sunlight. “The one that had the diamond in it. It’s almost five hundred years old. Can you believe that?” She didn’t want to make him feel worse, but she had to tell him. “We found out it belonged to Anne Boleyn—the wife of Henry VIII— and to Queen Elizabeth, and we even think ...” Hero hesitated. How to explain the rest?

  Mrs. Roth finished for her. “We think it proves the true identity of William Shakespeare. Imagine that, Daniel! William Shakespeare. We think Eleanor Murphy’s ancestor, Edward de Vere, was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth and the real William Shakespeare. ”

  “What?” Danny said. “What are you talking about?” He looked at both of them in bewilderment. “You never told me you had the necklace, Miriam. Hero, you never told me any of this,” he said accusingly.

  “Daniel,” Mrs. Roth said gently.

  “But if I’d known ...” Danny said. “I didn’t know you had the necklace.” He stared at the ground.

  Mrs. Roth sighed and took both of his hands in hers, stilling their frantic twisting. The wrinkled hem of his sweatshirt flopped against his jeans. “Oh, Da
niel.”

  Danny looked at the necklace in Hero’s hand. “It’s so small,” he said. He turned apologetically to Hero.

  “I should have asked you first. I should have talked to you about it. I thought you’d say no.”

  “Well, duh.” Hero smiled a little. She thought of the diamond and closed her fist around the empty pendant. Gently she settled the necklace in the nest of tissue paper inside the box. “So what did you do with it, anyway? You just mailed it to her? How do you know it’ll even get there?”

  “Hey, Federal Express.” Danny smiled, looking more like his old self. “I wrapped it in a sock.”

  Mrs. Roth stood slowly, resting her hand on the porch rail. She looked at the Netherfields’ house for a minute, not saying anything. Danny watched her anxiously.

  “Sorry, Miriam,” he said quietly.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she was smiling faintly. “Well.” She turned to Hero and Danny. “Nothing quite turns out the way we expect, does it? But Daniel is right. The diamond didn’t belong to us. I only wish ...” She crossed the porch and stopped at the door. “I wish I could have seen it returned to the necklace.”

  “I know,” Hero said.

  Mrs. Roth looked at Danny, and her eyes were kind. “But you two found the Murphy diamond! You had it for a few hours at least. I’m sure there’s much to tell, and I want to hear all of it. Come inside. It’s chilly this morning.”

  Hero and Danny followed her into the dark house. Mrs. Roth gestured to the worn furniture in the living room. “Sit down. I’ll bring us some tea.”

  Hero moved a newspaper and a book from the sofa, settling into the cushions. She saw that the newspaper was folded open to the crossword puzzle and idly started working it in her head. Put together, she read; seven letters, starting with C. Combine? No, connect.

  Danny remained standing, looking around the room with interest. “Hey, I’ve never been in here before,” he said. “Cool map.”

  “Yes, Australia,” Mrs. Roth called from the kitchen. “Now tell me about the diamond! Where did you find it?”

  “It was in one of the lights, just like we thought,” Danny said. They could hear the piercing whine of the teakettle.

  “The porch light,” Hero added. “The one we don’t have a switch for. That’s why no one ever found it before us.”

  “Really? That was clever of Arthur. An excellent finding place.” Mrs. Roth came into the room, carrying a tray of mugs and a plate of muffins.

  “Cranberry,” she said. “They’re a little tart. So what made you look there?” She nudged the books and papers aside and set the tray on the coffee table.

  Hero bit into a muffin and puckered her lips at the tang of the cranberries. “We looked pretty much everywhere else first,” she said. With a twinge, she remembered the bedroom light crashing to the floor.

  Danny walked behind the sofa, squinting at the array of photographs covering the wall. “We were about to give up,” he said.

  Mrs. Roth sipped her tea. “But you didn’t. You kept looking, as I knew you would. Neither of you is easily deterred. Tell me about finding it.”

  “Well,” Hero began. “Danny was about to leave because it was so late, and my parents were coming back soon, and we—”

  “We sort of thought of it at the same time. It was right above us—the light—and we looked up and figured the diamond might be there. Then Hero said it didn’t have a switch—”

  “And then we just knew it had to be there. So Danny helped me stand on the rail, and we got the light down—”

  “And there it was. Inside the glass,” Danny finished.

  Mrs. Roth shook her head in amazement. “And it’s been there all along! Right under our noses. Or over them, I suppose. What did you think of it? Oh, Hero, was it beautiful?”

  “Yes,” Hero said reverently. She thought of the diamond, reflecting tiny splinters of light in her hand. “It was sort of dirty, but even in the dark, it still sparkled.”

  “Hey,” said Danny. They both turned to him. He was leaning close to one of the pictures, rubbing the dust off the glass with his sleeve. “Hey, this looks like my mom.”

  Mrs. Roth smiled. “Does it? Is she blond, like you? That’s Anna’s school picture from her junior year. The last one I have of her.”

  “No,” Danny said, still staring at the photo. “What I mean is ... this is my mom.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  Hero scrambled onto her knees and leaned over the back of the couch. For a minute, she couldn’t understand what Danny was saying. But then she saw the photograph. She gasped. The girl in the picture had Danny’s blond hair and, more strikingly, his eyes, though it was hard to read their expression because they glanced away from the camera. Her mouth was drawn and pinched, not Danny’s wide grin. But there was no doubt. She looked so much like Danny she had to be his mother.

  Mrs. Roth walked over to Danny. “You must be mistaken,” she said gently.

  Danny’s face was flushed. His eyes were riveted to the picture. He couldn’t seem to see anything else. “No, listen. I know it doesn’t make sense. But it’s my mom. This is my mom.”

  Mrs. Roth stared at him. “That isn’t possible.”

  The silence in the room filled Hero’s ears. Suddenly she understood. She felt a shiver run through her whole body. Anna was Danny’s mother. Of course it was true. All at once she saw that it did make sense. It made more sense than anything else.

  “Mrs. Roth,” Hero whispered. “The finding place! You and Danny both called it that, but I thought it was just a coincidence.”

  Mrs. Roth turned to the photo. Her voice sounded small and far away. “But how can that be?”

  “And the postcard Anna sent you,” Hero continued urgently, “saying she’d had a baby. The baby was Danny!”

  Mrs. Roth reached out to touch the glass, running her fingers lightly across the girl’s face. Hero could tell it was something she’d done many times.

  “Oh, Mrs. Roth,” she breathed. “Your Anna is Danny’s mother. He’s your grandson.” Her words echoed through the still room.

  The color drained from Mrs. Roth’s face and she reached for the back of the sofa. Hero thought for a minute she might faint. But she kept staring at the photo, at the girl whose eyes always darted away.

  Hero shook her head, still puzzled. But was that possible? Mrs. Roth and Danny’s mother had lived in the same small town and never met? She turned to Danny. “But, Danny, you all lived here together, in the same town. How did you . . . why didn’t you ever find one another?”

  Danny dragged his gaze away from the photo and turned to Hero. “No,” he said slowly. “We used to live in D.C., right in the city. We moved out here when my mom left. The funny thing is, my dad said she picked it. The town, I mean. They’d been talking about moving out of the city, and she wanted a small town. She said it would be a good place for me to grow up. And then, after she left for California, my dad moved us here anyway.”

  Hero touched Mrs. Roth’s arm. She wanted somehow to connect, to make it all fit together. “Do you think she knew? Mrs. Roth, do you think Anna knew you were here?”

  Mrs. Roth kept stroking the glass of the picture, her eyes shining with tears. She seemed not to hear them. “Oh, Anna,” she whispered. “You were so close. You were so close all the time. How can it be I never found you?”

  Hero saw that Danny was looking at Mrs. Roth strangely. “You found me,” he said quietly.

  Mrs. Roth finally turned to them, her face pale and wet. She stared at Danny, hearing him for the first time. Her whole body shook. She pulled him tightly to her, and Danny’s hands rose slowly to touch her shoulders.

  CHAPTER

  29

  The rest of the afternoon had the strange feel of a dream, with people doing unexpected things that somehow seemed perfectly natural. Mrs. Roth looked happier than Hero had ever seen her, her eyes bright with pleasure, her hands reaching eagerly to pat Dann
y’s face or squeeze Hero’s arm. Danny appeared to be in shock, but Hero noticed that he put up with it all, never pulling back from her touch. Even though Hero herself was talking and eating muffins and drinking cup after cup of tea, she felt like she was watching it all from a great distance, the final scene in a play.

  They sat in the darkening living room until almost suppertime, talking about what had happened. Mostly they talked about Anna. Mrs. Roth told them every small thing she could remember. She brought out two faded albums of photographs, and together they leaned over them, peering through the yellowing cellophane at Anna eating birthday cake, Anna learning to ride a bike, Anna holding a neighbor’s kitten. They watched her hair grow long and short again, watched her gap-toothed smile change, filled with teeth too big for her face. They saw dance recitals and family outings and softball games. It was strange to see Mrs. Roth embedded in this family, Hero thought. Mrs. Roth always seemed so distinctly alone.

  “There aren’t many of Arthur. He took all the pictures,” Mrs. Roth said. “But, look, here he is.” She pointed to a middle-aged man with curly brown hair and glasses.

  Hero looked at him with interest. He was nothing like the Mr. Murphy of her imagination, the one she had pictured over and over hiding the diamond. He looked ordinary, like one of the neighbors. She realized that all of it looked ordinary, just the ordinary things families did, exactly like the photos in her parents’ albums at home.

  “So what happened?” she asked. “What made Anna leave?”

  Mrs. Roth sat back, sliding the album deeper into her lap. She didn’t say anything.

  Danny frowned at Hero. “Nothing made her leave. She just left, right?”

  Mrs. Roth flipped the pages back to the beginning of the album, to the little girl with white-blond hair and Danny’s eyes.

  “I’m not sure even Anna would know the answer to that,” she said. “I blamed myself for a while. As hard as that was, somehow it was easier than not having any reason at all.”

  Danny looked at her, not saying anything.