by Vicki Delany
Without warning, lightning flashed and the root cellar lit up. I could see Lily, cowering in a corner, Grant’s face breaking into a grin, the gun firmly held in front of him, his elbows tucked into his chest. The gun swung toward me as I pushed myself to my feet. The lightning faded in a muffled roar of thunder, plunging us into darkness once again. Grant had me in his sights and the root cellar was too small to run. But I would try. To save Lily.
The drifting tendrils of white mist swirled together, gathered strength and substance, formed a thick fog. It trapped me in a field of white; cold so deep and so heavy it must be like being out among the stars enveloped me. All my bravado fled, and I dropped to my knees to cower in the dirt of the floor and cover my eyes. The scent of death and decay had gone and I could smell woodsmoke, human sweat, farm animals, homemade soap, tallow candles.
I heard a single word, a woman’s soft voice, whispered on the mist. “No.”
A man screamed. The gun fired. Once. Twice. Sound exploded through the room. Grant Harrison gasped, made a choking sound as if he were struggling to breathe. Something heavy fell to the ground. All went quiet. I buried my head deeper into my arms and closed my eyes as tightly as I could.
Cloth, rough and scratchy, brushed up against my naked legs. The fierce cold burned my skin. It passed over me, and I was frightened no longer. I uncurled and opened my eyes. I dared to look up. The mist gathered around Lily as it began to thin. A wisp reached out, caressed Lily’s back. “Safe,” a voice said from a great distance. “Safe.”
The mist began to dissolve. It broke into long tendrils that petered away into nothing.
And then it was gone.
I crawled to the corner where I’d left Lily. I touched her, a terrified ball, and felt warm skin move. Then her arms were around my neck and she was sobbing. “Aunt Hannah. What happened? Where are we?”
“We’re safe, my dearest. We’re safe. Come on, up you get.”
I helped her to her feet and then I reached up, feeling for the string that was tied to the light bulb. I pulled it, and electric light so strong it hurt our eyes filled the room.
Grant Harrison lay on the floor. Face down. He did not move.
I led Lily around him, keeping her head buried in my side.
Connor’s body blocked the ramp. I lifted Lily over it and followed her without glancing down.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Rebecca Mansour lay in the driveway, blood pooling around her. She was alive, her heart pumping. I had to get to a phone, but I dared not venture into the house in case Jackson had recovered. We’d have to run up the road. Make it to a neighbor or flag down a passing car.
Gravel dug into my bare feet. I didn’t even dare go in search of shoes.
Lily pulled herself out of my arms. She headed toward Rebecca.
“We have to get help,” I called. “Come on, we don’t have much time.” I couldn’t leave her here alone.
She darted past Rebecca, going to Grant’s car. I couldn’t remember if I’d seen the keys in his hand. Had he put them in his pocket? I wasn’t going to venture back down to the root cellar to look for them.
The door of the car was open, the interior light on. Lily leaned in and came up with a tight smile on her face.
And a cell phone in her hand.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Rick Brecken and Gary Wolfe arrived, along with a steady stream of ambulances and patrol cars so numerous their lights banished the dark.
I told the first cops on the scene that Jackson was in the house. They went in, two of them, one at a time, moving slow, crouched low, guns drawn. Soon radios crackled to tell the paramedics it was okay to come in. When I saw movement at the doors, I pulled Lily into the shadows and held her against me, my head buried in the top of her hair. I did not want to look into Jackson’s face as he was carried out on a stretcher, his hands handcuffed in front of him, the back of his head matted with blood.
Once the house was declared safe, I took Sergeant O’Neil inside, to show her the box, sitting peacefully in the center of the farmhouse kitchen table. Brecken and Wolfe watched her open it. Wolfe turned away, disgust all over his face, and left.
Disappointed, no doubt, to find that all this was about something as crass and common as money.
I was being bundled into an ambulance, against my protests, when Rick Brecken called my name. I hesitated, and then turned to see him crossing the lawn. The paramedic gave me a slight nod and jumped into the back of the ambulance. I waited for Brecken.
“Hannah,” he said, “before you go.” He hesitated, the words caught in his throat. “I want to say I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“I’ve known Wolfe for a few years. I knew he’d been in Afghanistan, figured he’d be able to give me some unofficial background on you. I contacted him, asked what he knew. I didn’t realize there was something…personal between you two.”
“Nothing personal about it. He hates me because he’s a corrupt bastard and I’m good at my job. That’s all.”
“Yeah, I know that now. Anyway, I’m sorry. When he got my e-mail, he figured it was his chance to get back at you for whatever you did.”
“I did my job, nothing more.”
“I suspect he came here on his own, without telling his bosses what was up. They won’t be happy to hear he’s broken jurisdiction for a theft that got out of control.
“Good-bye, Hannah. I’ll be leaving now.” He held out his hand.
I looked at it, hesitating. Then I gripped it in my own.
The edges of his mouth turned up. “Take care of yourself.”
He helped me into the back of the ambulance. The doors slammed shut, the vehicle started up, and I was taken to the hospital. Lily had been taken away earlier.
The police followed me, and I spent many hours going over the story again and again, while Joanne and an unfamiliar doctor sat close to me, daring the officers to upset me.
In the morning Joanne, accompanied by Jake in a wheelchair, came to tell me that Rebecca Mansour had gotten to the hospital in time, and although her wound was serious, she was expected to make a full recovery.
I insisted on seeing her, and a nurse wheeled me to her room.
Rebecca lay in bed, propped up, eyes closed. Wires and tubes ran into her body and machines beeped.
I sat by the bed and studied her. Long black lashes lay still against her brown cheek. “Thank you,” I whispered.
The eyes opened. “For what? I did nothing but get shot.” Her voice was a croaking whisper. I leaned closer to hear. “Not much of a hero. I’m sorry, Hannah.” The sheet shifted and her hand appeared. Veins stood out and there were fresh puncture wounds in the skin. She wiggled her fingers and I touched them.
“My mother always said my stubbornness would get me into trouble one day. After all I’ve seen of cruelty and suffering the thought that those men had brought their violence and brutality here seemed more than I could bear. I simply was not going to do what they said. I guess my mother was right.”
Her eyes drifted closed. I wheeled myself out.
As nothing was wrong with Lily or me we were released into Joanne’s care before lunchtime. Jake would remain in hospital for another day or two, recovering from his surgery.
“He’s not at all pleased,” Joanne said in what I assumed was a considerable understatement. “He’s going to be laid up for weeks. Connor’s employment is, shall we say, terminated. And we have cops crawling all over the place.”
She slowed down as we passed the long driveway to the Harrison home. Conscious of Lily in the back, neither of us said anything.
There were so many police cars in our driveway, Joanne had to park on the road. An assorted group of neighbors and tourists, and a couple of news vans, were standing on the verge or in the ditch watching the procee
dings. Children ran in and out of the trees, but an officer was posted at the top of the driveway, keeping curiosity-seekers away. Last night’s thunderstorm had not broken the heat wave, and a hot sun blazed out of a blue sky. Damp mud filled the bottom of some of the deeper depressions, but the ground was rapidly drying.
A van was parked close to the entrance to the root cellar. Men and women in white suits, looking much like space invaders, came and left.
“Can I go check on the horses, Mom?” Lily asked. “They’ll be upset at having been left out in the rain all night with no food.”
Joanne smiled and ruffled the top of her daughter’s head. “Sure,” she said.
Lily galloped off, her blond braid streaming behind her.
“She doesn’t seem too traumatized by what happened,” my sister said to me, folding my arm into hers. “I called Mom earlier. They’re on their way. She’s going to find a counselor for Lily, to make sure that if she does have any latent effects, she’ll be cared for.”
Sergeant McNeil saw us standing together. She broke away from the group of men she was with and approached us. She looked like she’d been up all night. As she probably had.
“Hannah. I’m pleased to see you back on your feet so quickly.” McNeil studied my face.
“Right as rain.”
“I thought you’d want to know that it looks as though Harrison was killed by a ricochet. He fired two or three shots. We’re digging the bullets out of the wall now. The ricocheting bullet got him right between the eyes. If I may be so graphic. Foolish thing to do—fire blindly in the dark in such an enclosed space, with such solid walls.”
“Very foolish,” I agreed.
“All he had to do,” she mused, “would have been to wait a minute or two for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark and then he would have been able to see you and Lily.”
“Lucky us.”
We turned at a shout. A woman was coming toward us, dressed in the white forensic suit with a hairnet on her head and booties on her feet. Her latex-gloved hand outstretched. “I found something interesting, Sergeant. Hi, Joanne. Look at this. Nothing to do with what happened here last night, but we found this in the walls, buried in a crack. Looks like it’s been down there a long time. I guess it belongs to you people.”
Joanne and I leaned closer. Sunlight broke through the patina of age and neglect and flashed off a diamond. No, not a diamond, many diamonds, brilliant diamonds, large and small, embedded in silver. Shreds of cloth were caught in some of the gems. We looked closer and made out the shape of two large earrings.
“Oh, my gosh,” Joanne said. “Will you look at that? Jake will be so pleased. The legendary family treasure. Can I touch it?” she asked Sergeant McNeil.
“I don’t see why not. We won’t need it for any sort of evidence.”
Joanne picked one of the earrings from the outstretched latex glove. She blew lightly on it, dust lifted into the air, and she held it up in front of her between her thumb and index finger. Sunlight seemed to be attracted to it. Sparks danced and tarnished old silver shimmered.
“An inheritance,” I said. “For Lily.”
“For Lily.”
Chapter Forty
I’d like to be able to say that Omar left me, permanently, that night.
But he isn’t real and I’ve always known that. And whatever happened down in the root cellar was not able to heal my damaged brain.
But somehow that night did make a difference and from then on I steadily began to get better. It will be a long slow process, but at last I have hope that I might be normal again one day. I can keep a thought in my head, and I can add up a row of numbers, so I’ve taken over some of the account work from Joanne. I can read print and remember almost all of what I’ve read, which pleases me enormously. The pain is still there, still comes upon me unexpectedly, but I can manage it, most of the time, with my medication.
My family still fusses over me, and although I’m not ready to return to my condo in Toronto or go back to work, I’ve taken rental of a small vacation property in the county, not far from the farm, until Christmas. At the end of the year I will make some decisions.
And I’m writing this memoir, just to prove that I can. I don’t plan to show it to anyone, except perhaps to Lily when she’s older and can make sense of it.
As for the root cellar, it’s now simply a dark damp place where the farm stores root vegetables and canning. No smell of death or of woodsmoke, no drifting mist, icy cold winds, whispering voices. Whether whatever was down there was tied to the earrings or simply waiting until the day when she would save Lily, I do not know. I hope she has found peace.
Marlene swooped in and would have snatched the earrings out of Joanne’s hand had my mother, in full doctor-to-reticent-patient mode, not told her they didn’t belong to her. So back off.
Marlene contented herself with spreading the story far and wide to everyone who was interested, and many who were not, about the discovery of the Stewart family treasure and how it proves that the Stewarts were the gentry back in the old day.
The police searched Jackson’s room, where they found traces of Hila’s blood as well as her Koran. She’d been killed there, Sergeant McNeil came to tell us, not long after she’d been reported missing. The body was dumped into the woods after the area had been searched. No doubt they’d stolen her Koran in case she’d placed a clue to the location of the box in it.
They couldn’t ask Jackson, and he would never come to trial. He’d broken his neck in the fall, and lay in a coma for a month before he died.
McNeil took Hila’s wooden box and its contents away that night. Evidence, she said. Experts from the Royal Ontario Museum were brought to study it and pronounced the pieces of exceptional value and quality.
On a cold blustery winter’s day Maude Harrison, Rebecca Mansour, Jake, Joanne, Charlie, Lily, and I attended a ceremony in Ottawa where the treasure was formally returned to the people and government of Afghanistan. We were allowed a private viewing before the formalities. The pieces had been cleaned and laid on black velvet for best display. The statue, they told us, was Greek, probably second century B.C., the jewelry more modern, first century AD. The gold coins were Roman, of the Emperor Tiberius, the silver ones, the Parthian Mithridates II. As Lily shook the hand of the Afghan Ambassador, she told him she’d decided to become an archeologist.
I looked at them, the bronze god, the stunningly beautiful jewelry that would have adorned a nomadic princess, the ancient coins, one last time, full of awe at their beauty and their age, and feared that before long they’d once again disappear into the ravenous maw of war and destruction.
***
January 2, 1800. The diary of Mrs. Emily Stewart
A new century, how wonderfully exciting. Richard says the new century doesn’t really begin until next year, but I say pooh to that. Let us celebrate when we can.
It seems an appropriate day to begin writing again in my childhood book. I haven’t looked at it for many years. I found it tucked amongst my bedding when we returned to the farm that day long ago, and I put it away. When I realized Maggie had left us, I was scarcely able to look at it without weeping.
I think about Maggie every day. I don’t believe what Papa said, that she ran off with a travelling peddler. I was so angry at first, at her for leaving me. But then I remembered her telling me that I must keep up my reading and doing my letters and how I must always be strong and a true partner to my husband, never fearing to tell him if I thought he was wrong, and I believe she was telling me that she had to go. I hope she is happy, wherever she is. She was never happy here, although she tried hard to make me think she was.
I’m glad she took her earrings. She didn’t know that I knew about them, but how could I not, when I would wake in the night and see her bent over them and the light from the dying fire throwing r
ed sparks around her head.
The farm is doing well, I’m happy to say, now that Richard has taken it over. We’re planning to begin building a new house as soon as spring arrives, so we don’t have to live with his parents any longer. That horrid little shanty that was my family home can burn, as far as I’m concerned. We’ll have to move Mother into the new house with us. It would scarcely suit to make her stay out there, although it would be nice to have her constant complaining far from earshot. Still, she has no one else, now that Father is dead, Jacob in prison, and Caleb run off to the city. I feel sorry for her sometimes, although she has no one to blame for her misfortune than herself.
Perhaps word will reach Maggie that I’ve married and am going to have a family of my own, and she will return.
I pray for that every day.
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