She’d spent a restless night herself, just hovering on the wrong edge of sleep all night. City nerves, she’d told herself as she lay there, not wanting to move around too much for fear of waking Jilly. She just wasn’t used to all the ambient noise. It wasn’t the real reason, and she knew it, but she refused to let her mind dwell on what was really keeping her awake: Kathy and the book. The fact that Jilly had seen John Sweetgrass when he was supposed to be dead.
After shaking some dry cat food into Rubens’s bowl, she wrote a short note and left it propped up on Jilly’s easel:
Good morning, sleepyhead,
I decided to get an early start on some errands. I hope you don’t mind my leaving Rubens. I’ll be back around noon to pick him up.
Rubens ran up hopefully to her as she opened the front door, but had to settle for the quick hug she gave him before she slipped out into the hall. She waited a moment to see if he’d cry.
Good boy, she thought when he didn’t. You just let Jilly get some sleep.
Trailing a hand along the wall, she made her way down the steep stairs from July’s studio and out onto the street. There she stood on the pavement, checking her pocket for the key that she already knew was there, before she caught the southbound subway that would take her downtown to the bus terminal.
The key proved to be useless. It fit into the slot, but it wouldn’t turn. She tried it a half-dozen times, compared the number on the locker with the one on the key. The numbers matched, but the key wouldn’t work. Logically, it was what she should have expected. It made no sense that what Kathy had left for her in the locker would still be waiting for her after all this time. But still she was disappointed that, even from beyond the grave, Kathy hadn’t been able to work one last bit of magic. Isabelle had never known anyone who could manipulate luck better than Kathy had been able to. It was a gift that had only deserted her at the end.
Eventually Isabelle went looking for the security office, which she found tucked away in a short corridor on the far side of the public rest rooms. There were two uniformed men inside. The one who was her own age was slouched in a chair, reading a book. He looked up at her when she came in, giving her a glimpse of a pair of startlingly dark eyes before he returned his attention to his book. The older man stood at the counter, his admirable straight-backed posture at odds with the paunch that stretched over his belt.
“You have to understand, miss,” the older man said when she explained her problem to him. “We clear those lockers out every three months. Whatever we find is stored for awhile longer and then we dispose of it.”
Isabelle’s heart sank. She had no idea what Kathy had left for her in that locker. While it might have been of no intrinsic value by most people’s standards, it had still been important enough for Kathy to send Isabelle the key. The idea of it having been thrown away was unthinkable.
“Can you tell me where you would send it?”
“We treat it as abandoned. Anything that can be sold ends up in places like the Goodwill where the money can help out. The rest gets thrown away.”
“Yes, but—”
Behind the older security guard she could see his younger companion regarding her over the top of his book, a curious expression in those dark eyes of his. He ran a hand through his short brown hair and dropped his gaze when she looked back at him.
“It’s been five years, miss,” the older guard said.
“I know.”
“And you can’t even tell me what it was that your friend was storing for you.
“I understand,” Isabelle said. “It’s just ...”
Just what? she thought. There was nothing the man could do for her.
She could feel tears welling up in her eyes and turned away so that the man wouldn’t see them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d love to help you.”
Isabelle nodded. “Thank you. I I ...”
She gave him a helpless shrug and was starting to leave when the younger security guard put down his book and called her back. He opened the drawer of his desk and rummaged around in it for a moment. When he met her at the counter, he was holding a photograph that he laid down in front of her.
There were three people in the picture: Kathy, Alan and herself. They were sitting on the grass in Fitzhenry Park, a summer’s day, the sky a glorious blue behind them, the three of them so young. Isabelle couldn’t really remember ever having been so young, but she could remember that afternoon, Alan using the timer on his camera, setting it on one of the benches so that all three of them could be in the picture.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” the guard asked, pointing to her younger self. Isabelle nodded. “Where ...
where did you get this?”
“It was in your friend’s locker.”
Isabelle gave the older guard a confused look, but he was obviously as much in the dark as she was.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I was a big fan of Katharine Mully’s writing,” the younger guard said. “I recognized her when she came in. I wanted to get her to autograph one of her books for me, but I didn’t have any of them with me. So I slipped a note into the locker, asking her to stop by the security desk the next time she came in.
But then she ... well, died.”
“Mark,” the older guard said. “If you’re telling me you went into that locker, I’m going to—”
“No way. I waited the ninety days. But then I stashed what was in the locker. I figured someone was going to come for it someday. It was like one of her stories,” he added, looking to Isabelle for support.
“You know the way she talked about everything being a part of a pattern and how it all comes together someday? Like in the story ‘Kismet,’ when the two pen pals finally meet, even though one of them’s been dead for twenty years.”
“Kismet,” Isabelle repeated.
He nodded. “Fate. That’s what this is, my hanging on to that stuff and you finally showing up here five years later to collect it. Kismet.”
“You mean, you’ve got what she left for me?” Isabelle said.
Mark nodded. “It’s in my own locker. Hang on a sec and I’ll get it for you.” When he left the office, the older guard turned to Isabelle. “I want to assure you,” he said, “that what Mark did is completely against company policy.”
“You won’t hear me complaining,” Isabelle told him.
She realized that the younger guard would have gone through this mysterious legacy that Kathy had left her, but she was so relieved to actually be getting whatever it was that she couldn’t muster up any anger against him.
“He’s not going to get into trouble, is he?”
“Well, strictly speaking, he should have turned in whatever he found in that locker. Our policy is quite clear on that.”
“But then I wouldn’t be getting it now.”
“Yes, well ...”
The conversation didn’t go any further because the other guard returned at that moment, carrying a plastic shopping bag. From it he took two flat parcels, each wrapped in brown paper and taped closed.
Neither appeared to have been opened.
“This is all there was in the locker,” Mark said. “These two packages and the photograph lying on top of them.”
Isabelle ran a finger along the seam of one of the pieces of tape, unable to believe that he’d kept them as long as he had without ever looking inside. “You didn’t open them?” she asked.
“I couldn’t bring myself to. It’s like she entrusted me to take care of them.” He shrugged. “I know that sounds stupid, but you have to understand. I was going through a really rough time when I first started reading her work. I never got the chance to meet her, but those stories pulled me through. It’s like she was my friend, and you don’t pry into your friends’ private concerns; you wait for them to share them or not.”
Isabelle moved her hand across the surface of one of the parcels. She could tell what they were, simply from their shapes. One was a book. The other, the parcel that lay against her palm, was a painting. She could feel the give of the canvas under the weight of her hand.
