Fiona laid the envelope on the passenger seat beside her and stared out at the traffic streaming past her on the road. She tried hard to ignore the contents of the envelope, but it sat there, almost defying her with its presence. She was not ready to open it, was not ready to deal with the very personal belongings of the woman whose estate she had inherited, especially items that had been with her at the very moment of her death. She shuddered, considering for a moment about just discarding the envelope entirely. There was a large industrial bin off to one side of the police station. It would be very easy to cast it away and not allow it to trouble her any further.
She shook her head, silently berating herself for her fear and guilt. She was twenty-two; surely, she had the maturity to deal with the possessions of a dead woman.
Guilt? What an odd thought.
She had nothing to be guilty about, except that she lived and Jen had died – but Jen had chosen her own death, just as she had chosen Fiona to be the unwitting recipient of her life. No, there should be no guilt, yet guilt oddly enough remained, enough to keep the envelope where it was and face the mysteries of its contents.
Pulling away from the police station, Fiona pondered what had gone before. Upon learning about the strange inheritance, Fiona had felt confused; as if she had won a prize in a competition, she had no right to enter. Her family had waited for Jen’s relatives to contest the will, but none had come forward, even when notified of her death and the will. It seemed to be that Jen had left so light a mark upon the world that few came forward to claim her as their own. Her only notoriety came from her last living action; that had made headlines, yet within forty-eight hours, it too was forgotten as the news cycle pushed to the far greater tragedies and scandals.
Even her funeral was poorly attended, the extended Delany family and friends out numbering the handful of close neighbours and a few clients and business associates who had come up to pay their respects. Fiona remembered that her dad had cried about that, saying that if people really knew what Jen had done, there would be not just a handful at her funeral, but a multitude.
That bothered her, because it wasn’t like her dad to cry. The last time he had broken down was at the death of his father, so grieving over a woman who was almost a stranger to the family seemed so very odd that she still puzzled over it months later.
As she drove home, she glanced again at the bulky envelope. Despite her protests, Mum and Dad had shielded her from the immediacy of Jen’s death and dealing with her private belongings, by going in before into Jen’s house and removing the most personal of items – her computer, her clothing, her photos and her toiletries. She had complained about this, telling them that she was mature enough to deal with them. Yet, still she had been overruled.
Her dad had also been the one to contact Jen’s clients, informing them of her death; and then when a royalty check had arrived in the mail, he had contacted the publishers, who informed him that under provisions of the will, Fiona was to be the recipient of all Jen’s royalty income, as scarce and sporadic as it may be.
So she lived in what was still a stranger’s house, a house that although Fiona was striving to make her own, still bore the strong and unique imprint of its former owner. Fiona did not mind too much, it was a maturing time for her, but still the envelope and all that it contained was an uncomfortable reminder of a tragic past, and the guilt too was present, reminding her that everything she had received was at the cost of an innocent life.
*
Back at home, Fiona put the envelope on the dining room table and headed into her bedroom to change back into shorts and a t-shirt. She sat on the edge of her bed and watched a fly crawl across the wall, it stopped, and then as if making a life-changing decision, flew decisively towards the open window and freedom. A moment later and it was gone. Fiona sat a while looking wistfully out the window at the departed fly, and then, realising she was simply putting off the inevitable, stood and walked back to the dining room. For a long time she simply stood staring at the envelope, her palms unaccountably sweating and her pulse beating a fast rhythm. Then she sat down and turning the envelope over in her hands, finally undid the clip that held the envelope closed, and upended the contents onto the table.
A small grey wallet-style purse fell out, and then two blackened and twisted objects - one a half melted watch with hands stopped at eight minutes past five; the other a pair of glasses that although were blackened and twisted, possessed remarkably undamaged lenses. Fiona picked up the watch and shook it slightly, no movement ensued - the watch was presumably damaged beyond repair. She inspected the wallet. In it were a debit card of an account she was already familiar with and a handful of notes, plus a receipt from the Cromhart post office, along with other receipts and a few business cards. The clear photo section of the wallet showed a dog-eared and yellowing snapshot of a dour-faced, middle-aged couple, presumably Jen’s long deceased parents. Fiona slid the photo out and found two more photos tucked in behind. One was a more recent photo of a dog, a Kelpie, she turned it over and discovered written in a neat hand, just a few poignant words, ‘I miss you Harry.’
Fiona, her eyes welling with unexpected tears, put the photo down on the table, and with the back of her hand, wiped the tears away. Finally, she picked up the last photo, the back of the photograph was dated seventeenth of July 1979, and it was much creased and yellowed around the edges. Fiona turned it over to see the face of a man in his mid-twenties. He was dark haired and if the broad smile was anything to go by, possessed a roguish charm. There was a broad signature across the bottom of the photo, Fiona tried to make it out, but time had smudged it into illegibility.
Inexplicably saddened, she slipped the photos back into the wallet, removing only the business cards and the money. The debit card was useless to her. The bank had already closed Jen’s account, and the money that was in it, had been transferred to Fiona’s account, which fortuitously had been with the same bank.
Getting up, she searched for and located an empty shoebox, the items in good conscience, could not be dumped, but they could be stored away and eventually over time, forgotten.
Fiona put away the wallet and the watch, but when she picked up the glasses, they seemed for a moment to flare brightly, as if the sun caught the lenses. Frowning, she turned them over in her hands - something was odd about them, her fingers tingled, as if she held something that possessed a slight charge of electricity. Shivering, she stood up and took the glasses outside into the late afternoon sun. Peering at them, they seemed damaged yet ordinary, but her fingers continued to tingle. As if obeying a silent direction, Fiona placed the glasses upon her nose and looked through them.
For a moment, all she could see was a blur, then either the glasses or her eyes corrected themselves, and she gasped in amazement for the world had become strangely and significantly different. The sky was a vivid mauve, all colours enhanced, and within the trunk of every tree swirled strange energies and movements. Even the grass and ground itself moved and danced like rainbow patterns on a soap bubble. Entranced, Fiona looked around her, not wanting to remove the glasses, her mind enraptured at everything she saw. Finally, she looked back to the road and watched as out of the brilliant colours a small and slight figure of a woman glided towards her, her feet spinning an intricate tracery of light behind her.
The woman (whether she was human or not, was unclear), was not a beauty as the fashion magazines would judge her, but there was something utterly compelling about her long and loose raven dark hair, her ash pale skin, and her serious hazel eyes. She was dressed in a long robe of pure light, and her only adornment was a silver circlet about her brow with a single moonstone placed in it.
The woman glided up to her, and Fiona trembling, had to steady herself against the verandah rail for fear her legs would not hold her upright. Smiling, the woman held out her hands to her, and Fiona immediately smelt crushed honeysuckle.
“Fiona,” she said, “You are looking well, I see you have been hard at work repairing my old house...”
At those words, Fiona felt the world spin around her, and then as darkness closed in, she crumpled senseless to the ground...
*