The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(34)

I sighed and reached down to put my car in gear. It was then I noticed a blinking red light coming from inside my bag. My cell phone. I had a voice mail.

With my foot planted firmly on the brake, I fished out my phone and dialed into my message box. A vaguely familiar voice came through the earpiece. "Hi, it's Clayton. I hope you remember me. We met at the gym a few days ago. You know . . . when you were running from the bogeyman. Anyway, I'd still love to take you out for that smoothie...or PowerBar...or maybe even a whole meal, if you're up for it. Give me a call back when you get a chance. My number is..."

I ended the call and laughed aloud at the irony of it all. Fate definitely had a funny way of reminding you of what needed to be fixed in your life. Although tonight it seemed more like a nagging than a gentle reminding.

Well, what do you know? I thought as I pulled out of the parking lot. It appears I have a date, after all.





8

Pour Some Splenda on Me


I COULDN'T sleep that night.

Sophie's voice was echoing in my mind. I turned on my bedside lamp and stared at my phone. Should I call her? It's not like it was the first time we'd had a fight in our twenty years of friendship. But this one was different. It stood out among all the squabbles about borrowing skirts and forgetting to return phone calls and breaking plans to hang out with boys.

She had touched upon something. And for the life of me, I couldn't manage to let it go.

I checked the clock on my cell phone. It was too late to call her, anyway. Besides, why should I be the one to call? She was being unreasonable and insensitive, too. She should be the one to apologize first.

Right?

As I lay my head back against my pillow and stared at the white stucco ceiling of my three-bedroom condo, paid for with my own, hard-earned money, decorated with my own burning desire to live in a world of whiteness and clarity, the confusion slowly began to unravel. And the walls started to close in.

I attempted to distract myself by trying to outline shapes in the seemingly random arrangements of white cement that covered my ceiling, just as I had done so many times as a young girl, sleeping with the lights on, searching for anything that might appear recognizable and therefore meaningful. But after a few short minutes I knew that wasn't working.

And I also knew the only thing that would.

I had to take another look inside the box.

I rolled onto my side and pulled open the bottom drawer of my nightstand. The drawer that served one purpose, and one purpose only: to hold the locked container that waited inside.

I reached into the drawer and drew the small, wooden box close to me.

It used to be my mother's. And before that, it was her grandmother's. She had kept it on a shelf, in a small alcove at the back of my parents' walk-in closet. I always loved the look, feel, and even the smell of it. The distinct cedar aroma that escaped every time I lifted the lid. It was old and worn and smooth to the touch. I would sneak into my parents' closet when I was little, carefully turn the tiny, brass key that my mom kept in the lock, and open it, reveling in its contents.

My mother never kept anything particularly special or secret worthy in the box. A few pieces of old jewelry, a picture of my great-grandmother, and an old coin whose significance was never fully explained to me. But I liked the sensation I got when I snuck into the closet to look inside the box. Like I was uncovering something I wasn't supposed to see. I would pretend that I was an archaeologist, stumbling across some great, long-lost artifact that, if revealed to the world, would provide a solution to years of unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries.

One time my mom found me looking in it. And in staying true to my shadowy fantasy, I was sure that I would be in some kind of trouble. Caught red-handed. Something about how I was too young to know such truths. Too innocent to be exposed to such stories that the box surely contained. But she simply laughed adoringly at me and asked, "What's your obsession with that old box, anyway?"

I quickly shut the lid and shrugged, feeling foolish and childish for making it into something that it clearly was not. "Dunno. I just like it" was my timid response.

My mom later gave the box to me as a gift, when I graduated from college. "It's always seemed to mean more to you than it has to me," she said.

When I accepted the gift with a grateful smile, the simple touch of it brought back all the memories and sensations that it had evoked when I was younger. A feeling of sacredness. A treasure chest for secrets.

And five years later I had found just the thing to keep inside it.

It had become my own Pandora's box. Nearly empty, except for that last tiny ounce of hope.

I no longer kept the key in the lock, the way my mother used to. I hid it underneath a thin layer of velvet fabric that lined the insides of the nightstand drawer. I had carefully peeled back the edge of the cloth and placed the key inside, locking the secret away.

I now removed the cherished, brass key from beneath the fabric and placed it in the lock. And as I turned the key and opened the lid, the warm sensations ran through my fingertips.

They were different sensations now that I was older and had my own secrets to keep. I no longer felt the thrill of a childhood make-believe game, saving the world with the discovery of a magical relic. But the thrill that ran through me as I peered inside and viewed the contents of the beloved treasure chest was just as exhilarating. And the soothing feeling of accomplishment that came over me as I closed the lid and placed it back inside the bottom drawer was just as satisfying.