CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ALICE HELD A QUART CAN in front of her like it was some dead animal she’d discovered living under her bed. Her other hand held a paintbrush, which she treated much the same.

“I can’t tell from paint chips. Unless I was as small as a Barbie doll, which I am not. I need to see this on a wall. And not only in the morning light, but all through the day and at night, too.”

Frank sat on a folding chair in the midst of the clutter of their new venture. He was flipping pages on a clipboard, apparently deep in thought, a pencil tucked behind his ear at an absolutely rakish angle. He was wearing his two-hundred-dollar workshirt, custom-made, with his monogram on the cuff, made of very fine Egyptian cotton denim. He wasn’t sure whether denim was made in Egypt or not, but the tailor had said it was, and Frank had no good reason to doubt him. And the shirt was stunning. Even Alice admitted that.

Alice did not like to paint walls.

“I see a freshly painted wall and I get vertigo, and I wind up falling against it. Why is that?” she had remarked.

She dipped the brush and carefully stroked the paint onto a rear wall, creating a big square of color.

“I can’t paint,” she said emphatically, hoping Frank would take the hint and take the paint and the job from her. He did not.

“Frank,” she said, with some expectation in her voice.

“Alice,” Frank responded, attempting to match her tone, but his attempt was totally contrived.

“Frank, can you paint? I’m no good at this.”

He looked up. “Weren’t you a fine arts major in college? Of course you know how to paint.”

She would have stomped her foot, in an Ethel Merman sort of theatrical move, but was afraid if she had, the paint would somehow slop out of the can and spill all over her leopard-skin flats.

“I used teeny, tiny brushes. I can’t use these big clodhopper brushes.”

Frank stood up, put the clipboard on the chair, and stepped to his wife’s side. “I’m not painting a thing—but that color is superb. That is one terrific choice. You have remarkable color sense.”

Alice beamed. “You think so?”

“Oh, I do. No need to go any further.”

And with that, he walked off, tape measure in hand, leaving Alice to wonder if he had agreed so quickly just to get out of painting.

The more she pondered, the more positive she became that Frank had done just that.

Yet … the color was really smashing on the wall, and she didn’t want to be bothered anymore with the decision.

She put the paint can down, as if it were still that dead, unattractive animal, and stepped back.

We are on our way. The focal-point paint color is the first step. Once that’s done, everything else falls into place.

She squinted.

And the paint color is just so perfect.

She opened her eyes wide, and knew for a fact, just then, that Alice and Frank’s Take Two was going to be a smash hit as soon as it opened.

Totally surprised, Jack tapped at the glass window of the Midlands Building and smiled. The cool morning had left pockets of condensation at the top and bottom corners of the large display window.

“What are you doing here so early?”

Frank and Alice sat together at a folding table, with white tablecloth, candle, cups, and a plateful of what Jack surmised to be croissants. There was a blazing fire going in the fireplace.

Where do you get croissants in Butler?

Alice beamed and waved him inside, taking his arm, pulling him to the table. Before he had a chance to decline, she poured him a cup of coffee.

“We couldn’t wait to try out the fireplace,” Frank explained. “As you can see, it still works great.”

“Have a croissant,” Alice said. “And a scone. You simply must try a scone. We found a wonderful little bakery—Dominique’s. French. They are simply delightful. We now have our pastry source for the store. Croissants are an indispensable part of Alice and Frank’s.”

Frank pulled up another folding chair to the table—all matched items, of course—and insisted that Jack join them.

“We have coffee—good, solid, Eight O’Clock French roast coffee,” Frank said. “We don’t believe in fancy. Just excellent quality.”

Then Alice stared at him, and they both burst out laughing.

“Who am I trying to kid? I love fancy things. But I also love Eight O’Clock coffee. French roast. Ground this morning. Another perfect taste.”

Jack felt more than a bit overwhelmed. He never had this much conversation in the morning. Never. But, in spite of what he was most used to, he found himself enjoying it.

“The croissant is delicious. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a fresh, authentic French one before,” Jack said, talking as he chewed, as politely as he could. He felt he needed to hold up his end of the conversation.

Alice swung her hand out and clasped it over her heart, as if about to swoon. Jack figured this wasn’t an unpracticed gesture. Alice would be the sort of woman who managed to pretend to swoon often.

“Never have eaten a real French croissant? Where were you raised? Barbarian Land? Egg McMuffin Acres? Good heavens. No croissants?”

Frank apparently enjoyed the show as much as Jack did. “Ask him, my sweet, when he had his first latte?”

Alice narrowed her eyes in mock suspicion. “Don’t tell me …”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t drink lattes. I’ve never had a latte.”

Alice pretended to collapse on the table. “No lattes! No croissants! I’ll bet you’ve never had a scone, either. We have hired Cro-Magnum Contractor, Frank. We must bring him into the twenty-first century.” Alice’s hand stopped in midswoop. “We are in the twenty-first century, aren’t we? Somehow that sounds so … futuristic.”

Alice adjusted her Bulgari scarf, broke off a large corner of her croissant, and popped it into her mouth. “Frank, my dear, please, walk Jack around the store. Ask him about our plans. See if he agrees with what we have envisioned. Our last contractor, that horrible little man in Shadyside, had absolute tremors when we asked for nontraditional furnishings. So outré. He simply did not understand our ethos. You understand our ethos, don’t you, Jack? Please say that you understand?”

Frank pulled Jack to the far corner, where he grabbed his clipboard. “Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain. She is a highly frustrated theater double major.”

Frank took the pencil from behind his ear, carefully, as not to disturb his morning hair. “This is my rough sketch. I will have the architect du jour draft the final plans, but I would like your opinion on the viability of what I’m suggesting.”

For the next half hour, Frank lead Jack around the room, pointing out where display cases would go, where moveable tables would be placed, where seating nooks and window seats would be built in, where the ceiling would be dropped to afford intimacy, and where lighting would be the most dramatic.

Jack nodded throughout the walk.

“I can see that.

“I could build that.

“That would be an easy construction.

“That makes sense.”

At the end, Frank said, “That’s about it. What do you think?”

“Wonderful. It will be a really neat place when we’re done.”

Frank beamed.

“Neat. You hear that, Alice? ‘Neat.’ We have ‘neat’ ideas.”

Alice looked up from a catalog, written in French. “Neat. I guess neat is one step closer to nifty. Our goal. Neat and nifty. Sounds like a law firm from the fifties.”

“One thing, though,” Frank said. “That door on the back wall. The old carved one with the huge deadbolt on it. What’s behind that?”

Jack turned to look. He knew the door Frank mentioned. The door was huge, nine feet tall, done in solid walnut, Jack thought, with hand-carved panels—a vine and floral motif, almost like a border on an illuminated manuscript, or a motif of William Morris, Jack thought, cut into the dark, dense wood. It was both an antique and a work of rare craftsmanship, of fine artistry.

Jack walked to it, to examine it one more time. “It’s a wonderful old door. Amazing carvings. I looked at it before. Asked Mrs. Ruskin about a key, and she said she didn’t have one. Neither did the bank who sold it to her.”

Frank tried the doorknob, an ornate brass one, as if no one had ever tried simply opening it. Of course, the door did not budge.

Jack pointed to the opposite edge of the door. “Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Ninety-nine doors like this out of a hundred, maybe nine hundred ninety-nine out of a thousand, have hinges on the outside, so the door can easily open outward. If it’s for storage, you don’t want the door opening into the inside. Takes up all the storage area with the swing. But there are no hinges out here. The hinges are inside. That’s unusual. Like they didn’t want anyone to be able to pull the hinge pins out to get inside.”

“Well,” Frank said, “you can just cut around it, right?”

Jack made a sweesh sound by breathing in over clenched teeth. “Maybe. But see down there by the floor? I cut into the plaster—to see what I might be up against. Two four-by-four posts stacked against each other, I think, surround the whole door. There would be a whole lot of demolition to this wall to get it out. And there’s a second lock at the bottom of the door,” Jack said pointing. “Almost as big as the main deadbolt. There’s no key for that either.”

Frank rubbed his hands together. “A mystery. I love old mysteries. What do you think is back there? Al Capone’s treasure?”

Jack had to laugh.

Frank’s voice now had an excited edge to it. “Diamond Jim Brady’s lost diamond stickpin collection? He was from Butler, you know. There is a rumor that he had dozens of dazzling diamond stickpins—three-carat monsters. That’s where he got his name, you know. When he died, there was only one single stickpin found. Maybe the rest are in there. This building is from the right time frame.”

Jack shrugged and held his palms up. “Maybe. But I wouldn’t take a loan out on the possibility.”

“Wait until I tell Alice. She will be so excited about finding a hidden fortune.”

And with that, Frank hurried to his wife, who was still seated at the table, flipping through her French catalog.

Jack turned to the door once more, and wondered how he was going to get this door open without destroying it in the process.

Sometimes things have to be broken in order to be made whole.

That night, Jack lay in his bed, hoping sleep would come and free him. His workday had gone fine. He had successfully battled his urges one more day. He had talked for an hour with Earl over his dinner. He had walked the streets until it became dark. He’d showered and now lay in the stillness, the traffic light buzzers now silent.

He dozed off.

He awoke with a start, sitting up in bed, just like in the movies, he thought. He blinked, trying to focus.

3:00 a.m.

He covered his eyes with his hands and tried to remember.

It was a dream about that door. I managed to get to the hinges somehow and slipped the hinge pins out and pushed the door open the wrong way.

He tried to focus on the images of the dream.

There was something inside … perfect … some perfect thing.

It allowed me to forget. It erased the memories.

He felt like crying.

If I could just forget.

He opened his eyes to the darkness and everything that he lost was right there, in the darkness, just past the reach of his fingertips, waiting for him, waiting to ruin whatever he had ever hoped to become.

It was all so real.

Amelia Westland, age twenty-one years, one month

Lyndora

Butler County, Pennsylvania

August 5, 1883

God is good, and faithful and just. I have always held that to be certain, regardless of my circumstances. He has been steadfast in His care of me, allowing me to be interviewed for a position to teach in the town of Lyndora, just to the south of Butler proper. The schoolhouse, in good repair and of modern design, features a sizeable classroom with stove, and all necessary books and materials, plus a teacherage at the back, consisting of a pair of small rooms, which features a small fireplace, furnishings, and a closet for the teacher’s personal effects. The school committee has informed me that a winter’s supply of coal and wood is included in the stipend, plus some free time in the summer in which one may seek other employment to augment one’s salary.

The position was extended to me, and after much prayer, I accepted the kind and generous offer. In the interim I have been again housed in the home of the generous Dr. and Mrs. Barry, a godsend in my life, who have been so keenly interested in my studies and pleased with my successes. The staff was likewise kind to me, and precious hours in Catherine’s company brought me much joy. On one lovely day, I strolled down to Cliff Street to Harton’s Livery, the establishment that now employs Mr. Beck, who is no longer indentured, but fully and gainfully employed.

We enjoyed a polite meeting, restrained and cordial. There was much to speak of, but he had scarce a half hour for his midday meal, and since I cannot be seen without chaperone after hours with any man, we made the best of our time. He inquired as to my recurring spells of nervousness, and I truthfully told him that I appear to no longer be vexed with such a condition.

Since I brought all my possessions with me to Butler, I will be allowed to occupy the quarters in the schoolhouse prior to the commencement of classes and prepare for the term ahead, which begins in three weeks’ time.

But my God shall supply all your need
according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

—Philippians 4:19