The Price of Inheritance

by Karin Tanabe

  How could Brian not have felt it? I thought about how much I had held that bowl since I had bought it. I had carried it in my bag with me around Newport when I went to meet Greg. I had felt its weight on my body; I knew how much it pulled on my shoulder when I walked. I had turned it over to be photographed, moved it from shelf to shelf. At this point I knew it almost the way a potter who threw it would have known it. And I understood why Brian hadn’t felt the difference. It was too subtle to tell if you weren’t very familiar with both.

  Both. Because there had to be two.

  My phone rang and I jumped and hit my knee on the bottom of the table, just like I had that January day in Baltimore when I had been at the Rusty Scupper with Nina and her brother. I grabbed it, pushed accept, and before I could say hello, I heard Hannah’s voice.

  “What’s your real name?” she asked me immediately.

  “Carolyn Everett.”

  “How do you know Ford?”

  “I’m dating him.”

  There was silence after that. I could hear the faint sounds of students or other teachers behind her but she remained quiet.

  “Are you still interested in that commission?” she said.

  I hesitated. She was in public. Maybe still in the building where I had gone to see her.

  “I am. I’m very interested. I’d like to talk to you about it.”

  “You’re in Newport?”

  “That’s right, but I can go anywhere.”

  “Let’s meet in the middle. What’s in the middle of Hartford and Newport?”

  I thought of the scenery along Route 165. Right on the state line there was a pond. I used to go swimming there sometimes when I was younger.

  “Do you know Beach Pond? Route 165 cuts right through it. It’s not a busy road.”

  “I know it.”

  “If you turn right off the road, a left for me, there’s a small parking area that leads up to hiking trails and you can access the water right there. It’s always empty except in the height of summer. There’s a no-swimming sign nailed into a tree. It’s old-looking; you can’t miss it. I’ll meet you right under it.”

  “I’ll be there in two hours,” she said, then hung up the phone.

  Two hours. It only took forty-five minutes to drive there from Newport but I wanted to leave immediately. I went to the back of the store and got one of William’s thick foam packing boxes and cut out enough in the middle with a box cutter to fit the bowl. My days of throwing it in my purse were over.

  I taped around the middle of the foam with packing tape and then thought better of it and ripped it off. I didn’t want it to be difficult to remove. Nothing to make Hannah more nervous. Or me. Instead, I put the foam box inside a grocery bag, one of the thick ones with a large square bottom that you took to pastry shops. I ran outside to my car and found a beach towel on the floor of the passenger’s side. It was lapis blue and slightly torn at one edge. I folded it and put it on top of the bag. I walked back into the store and looked at one of the grandfather clocks, ticking rhythmically. An hour and thirty minutes until Hannah. I put on a green cashmere sweater that Jane had lent me, wrote William a note, left it on the glass table, and started my drive toward Connecticut.

  The roads into Connecticut from Rhode Island were not highways. They crossed right over the hum of Interstate 95 and stayed completely removed from the soulless drive to New York. The streets were full of New England charm: farmhouses set back from the road, tiny antique stores, a few slightly dilapidated barns. And when the winding suddenly stopped, you rolled down a hill and came upon Beach Pond, right on the Connecticut–Rhode Island line, edging slightly farther into Connecticut. Away from the parking lot and nature trails, houses flanked the swollen side of the lake, their docks peeking into the water. I saw it in the distance and flicked on my left-turn signal even though there was no one behind me, no one in front. I pulled into the gravel area with a few non-outlined parking spaces and turned off my ignition. It was an afternoon of gray-blue skies. Right overhead, the blue was spotless, but if I looked west over Connecticut, I could see spring rain starting to roll in. I hoped it held until the evening. I walked onto the beach and took my shoes off. I still had forty minutes until Hannah was due to arrive. I dipped my toes in the cold water and let it climb up my ankles and then my calves, right to my knees. I hadn’t put my feet in the water since I’d jumped in with Tyler. Our dare. Our “I love yous.”

  I moved toward the road as I heard a car and saw a white Volkswagen slow down as it approached the turnoff. I walked out of the water, not bothering to wipe my feet, put my boat shoes back on, and headed to the parking lot. Hannah parked next to my car and I stayed rigid on the beach as I watched her get out of her hatchback and turn around to look at me.

  “I just need to get something from the car,” I said, pointing to my backseat. She nodded and watched me as I opened the side door, reached in, and got the shopping bag. I slung it on my shoulder and walked toward her. She was leaning against her trunk. Her long dark hair was up in a thick ponytail and this time, she wasn’t wearing clothes covered in clay.

  “We can sit on the beach if you like,” I said, pointing to where I had been when she pulled up.

  “That’s fine,” she said, following. Hannah was a few inches taller than me and was dressed like someone who didn’t care too much about clothes but always looked nice despite it. She walked with me onto the sand and I put my oversize towel out and sat on it. She kicked off her gray sandals and joined me.

  “Why did you say your name was Katie?” she asked, looking at the bag and then looking back at me.

  “Because of Tyler’s sister. I thought you’d recognize the name and frankly, I wanted to make you nervous.”

  I could see that it had worked.

  “What’s in that bag?” she said, motioning cautiously with her head.

  “A bowl. Would you like to see it?”

  “No.” She looked at the glassy water, which was beautiful, despite being next to the road. “It’s a shame you can’t swim here anymore. I used to come here when I was younger.”

  “I did, too. I used to love to swim here. It’s a lot calmer than the Newport water. Are you from Rhode Island, too?”

  “I’m from Hartford. I moved to Newport for a job.”

  I didn’t bring up St. George’s. I wasn’t sure why but I didn’t want Hannah to know I had gone there. I looked at her face, and the scar on her chin was much more noticeable from this short distance. It went around the bottom and up the sides a little, like where the elastic from a child’s paper party hat would leave a mark.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” I said, not knowing what I was going to ask her.

  “Oh, stop being so phony polite. Why are all you Newport girls like that? Just talk. It’s not opening night. That’s why I came, right? Because you want to ask me questions. Prying personal questions about the commission.”

  “There is no commission.”

  “No shit.”

  I pulled one of my legs under me, adjusted my white shorts, and didn’t answer. I wanted to take the bowl out. I wanted to see her face when she saw it.

  “I got a call last week,” she said, not looking at me. “Which is the only reason I’m here.” Her head seemed turned permanently toward the water. “It was someone from NCIS.”

  My heartbeat doubled. I had no idea that NCIS had called her.

  “Brian Van Ness? Josh Wallace?” I offered.

  “The second one. Josh Wallace. He left a message at school for me.”

  “Did you ever talk to him?”

  “No. He called and said he had some questions about Ford and I called him back but then he never returned my call, so I figured all their questions were answered. But it still scared me. It was almost worse because they didn’t call me back. They called you too, right? That’s how you found me?�
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  “No, I found you because someone told me you taught art at St. George’s. I just kind of pieced it together from that. But NCIS did contact me.”

  “Was it about Ford? Is he in trouble?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I don’t think so. They stopped contacting me so they seemed to have dropped their investigation about his possible wrongdoing. But I haven’t seen him in nine days, so I don’t know all the details.”

  She sat up and wiped the sand off her palms before putting them on the towel, slightly behind her.

  “Did all their questions get answered?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “But you have different ones.”

  “I think I know something that NCIS doesn’t.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you, though,” she said, stating the obvious. “Who are you even to come to my school and throw Tyler Ford’s phone number in my face?”

  “I don’t remember throwing it, but you’re right, I’m no one. I’m just a girl who works in an antique store in Newport. But I used to work at Christie’s.”

  That last word caused her to turn and face me.

  “You worked at Christie’s, the auction house? Why don’t you work there anymore?”

  “I got fired.”

  She turned away from me again. It was then that I noticed that her nose, which might have been naturally thin and small, now looked almost too thin and small, like it had been redone when there was nothing much left to remake it with.

  “You got fired from Christie’s and now you’re in Newport dating Tyler Ford. Not the typical resume.” She paused and changed directions.

  “Does he know you know me? I mean, that you contacted me?”

  Hannah had never called Tyler to tell him. Or she was just trying to catch me off guard.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I said. “Unless he’s follow­-ing me.”

  “He might be,” said Hannah. “That’s definitely his style. He’s . . . intense.” The clouds had started to thicken above us and I reached for the edge of the towel and wrapped it up around my bare legs.

  “Did everybody tell you what happened to me, when you started dating Ford?”

  “Everybody did.”

  “That’s nice of them. Don’t end up the next Hannah Lloyd, right?”

  “Something like that. I should also tell you that I know Mike Fogg,” I admitted.

  She turned to me and focused on my face until we were staring at each other.

  “I don’t talk about Mike Fogg. You bring up his name again, and I leave. Okay?”

  “I’m sorry. He’s not a friend. I just wanted to be honest.”

  “Yeah, well, the truth isn’t worth it sometimes.”

  We sat silently next to each other for a few moments, two women trying to size up each other’s agenda.

  I sat in the stillness and tried to take in the tenor of Hannah. The way Tyler kept his promise of silence to her, coupled with her reaction just now, I knew Mike had done the unthinkable. Hannah was just one who wanted to keep it quiet, wanted to bury it, and Mike was still in New York, living his fortunate life, planning to come back and summer in Newport. Instead, we were all chasing Tyler.

  “Can I ask you one thing about that night at the Blue Hen and then I will drop it?” I asked Hannah. “I don’t think I can have the conversation you and I need to have without asking you this question.”

  “Try me.”

  “Did Tyler mean to hit you that night or was it an accident?”

  “Do you think he’s the kind of person who would do that? Punch his girlfriend in the face? Because if any part of you thinks that, you don’t know him very well.”

  “So it was an accident.”

  “Of course it was an accident. I shouldn’t have been there, but he was in one of his moods where he’ll do anything to right a situation as much as he can. I thought he could kill Mike. I seriously did. He might have if I hadn’t jumped in.”

  “Did you worry he might hit you?”

  “I wasn’t worried about anything right then except what would happen to Ford if he attacked Mike. How far he would go. I never thought it was going to end up like it did. Me being the one knocked out cold, waking up in the hospital unable to move my mouth.”

  “You left after that.”

  Hannah was fidgeting with her jeans, rolling and unrolling the bottom of her left cuff as she spoke. Her face was flushed and I understood then how Tyler could have been in love with her. When she let her guard down, she came off very soft, very pretty.

  “Things changed; you can understand why. I grew a little afraid of him. Not because I thought he would hit me, but because he’s a lot of person. He can be hard to deal with. And there was so much pressure from the town, my whole world. You hear the way people still talk about him. I was in the hospital. My face was shattered. Everyone told me to never speak to him again and I didn’t, but they didn’t know the circumstances. They thought Ford was violent on top of everything else they already thought. But that’s not really the truth. I just couldn’t bear everyone knowing. It happened the Saturday before the Fourth of July, and I haven’t seen much of him since.”

  “Doesn’t he know where you are? You’re less than two hours away.”

  “Sure. He tried to come and see me all summer. He called hundreds of times, but I refused. And Ford, he’ll be Ford, but he won’t push that limit. He could feel what I needed, and for a while, it wasn’t him.”

  “And you haven’t seen him since then?”

  “I did, just twice though.”

  “Twice. Why twice? Recently?”

  “Open that,” she said, pointing at the bag next to me, “and I’ll tell you.”

  I looked at her for a long while before reaching for the bag. I wanted to give her time to change her mind, to tell me to leave her alone, but she didn’t say anything else. She just watched me watching her until the heaviness of her expression turned my confidence to awkwardness. I looked behind us to make sure there wasn’t anyone around and took out the foam box. I took off the top and let her see the bowl.

  “Can I take it out of this?” she said, pointing to my makeshift packaging.

  Part of me was afraid she would break it. Shatter it and throw the shards in the pond so I could never do anything with it. That was the problem with art. It was so easy to ruin. I hesitantly nodded yes and she reached her hands down and took the bowl out delicately, by both sides of the rim. She turned it around and looked at the words carved in the bottom, then she ran her fingers around the circumference of the base and up along the sides. She turned it over and looked at the glaze, holding it up slightly to see it in different light. Finally, she put it back in the box, just like I had packed it.

  “Is it yours?” I asked, trying to contain myself.

  “It’s definitely not mine.”

  I looked at her, her hand still on the bowl like it was something she had owned for decades. It had to be hers.

  “But you’ve seen it before.”

  She picked it up again and transferred it from one hand to the other.

  “Do you know what the words in Hebrew on the base say?” I asked her.

  “Of course I do. ‘First and the last.’ ”

  She’d made it. I knew she had.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  A car flew past us, speeding toward Connecticut, and we both jumped at the sound of the motor tearing through the silence. It pulled over on the side of the road about a hundred yards in front of us and we both watched it, frozen. A middle-aged woman in the New England uniform of a navy and white striped sweater and khakis got out, took a picture of the swelling side of the lake with her phone, and got back in. Neither of us moved until the car was out of sight.

  “I never thought I’d be in this position,” said Hannah finally. She t
ook both her hands and ran them through her hair, her elastic stopping their movement. “That phone call from NCIS stunned me.”

  “It surprises me that they didn’t call you back.”

  “Well, they didn’t.”

  “They took this bowl from me when they came to talk to me at the store. They thought it could be stolen. There is a bowl exactly like this in the National Museum of Iraq. They thought this could be it.”

  I watched Hannah’s pretty face turn icy. She looked down, her thick eyelashes fluttering.

  “They said that? There’s a bowl that looks like this in the National Museum of Iraq?”

  “You didn’t know that?” I asked.

  “I had no idea. Is it still there?”

  “No,” I replied, trying my best to gauge her reaction. “It was stolen during the Iraq War. It’s been missing since 2003.”

  I could tell that what I’d said had upset Hannah. She was very nervous. Her heart-shaped face was flushed and everything about her body suddenly felt restless.

  “And what did NCIS tell you about this bowl?” she asked, touching it again with her fingertips.”

  “They said it was a copy. Not the original. They even TL-tested it. Do you know what TL—”

  “Of course I do,” she said, interrupting me. “I’m sure I know a lot more about ceramics than you do.”

  I was sure she did, too. Especially how to throw and glaze pottery so well that it could be confused for an antiquity.

  “They had an expert from Sotheby’s, Max Sebastian, fly in from London to do the test at Brown. He’s the one who alerted them that it could be the real thing. I had reached out to him and so had someone else from Newport. He did the TL testing. You know how expensive that procedure is. But they did it. Max and the NCIS guys concluded it was new. Made recently.”