The Opal Legacy Part 5

"I never thought I'd be so indebted to kelp."

"You never told me why you were at the university that day."

She hesitated and was saved from answering immediately when the waitress placed their dishes of food on the table. "They wanted me to take part in a study," she said after the waitress left.

"A study?"

"Something to do with psychology."

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"I do want to, yet it's hard for me to begin. Why, I don't know. I suppose I've always been afraid people would think I'm strange and I don't want to be different." She took a deep breath. "I have an opal that's been in my family for generations. In some way the gem triggers dreams of the future."

"Is the opal in a ring?"

"No, the stone's unset. The opal's too large for a ring but someday I'd like to have it made into a pendant." She went on to describe her dreams, the young man, George Wagner, and his plunge from the high-rise, and finally her interview with Craig Ritter. "Two days ago, before I phoned, I dreamed about you."

"From what you've just told me I don't know if I should be pleased or whether I should buy more life insurance."

"My dreams aren't something to make fun of."

"I'm sorry. Tell me your dream."

"I was on a bluff overlooking a lake or an ocean. There must have been a storm because the waves pounded the sh.o.r.e. You came to me, pleaded with me to come to the house, but I wouldn't and you walked way, left me, and when I followed, a section of the cliff gave way at my feet. Afterwards I looked but couldn't find you again."

"And that's all?"

"Yes, my dreams are usually fragments. This one can't be true, though-I'll never turn my back on you like I did in the dream. Never."

"Could you see the house?"

"No, yet I seemed to know it was behind you, lower, near the sh.o.r.e. I do remember seeing a small tree with a strange name. I'd never heard the name before. Cherry. Cherry something."

"A chokecherry?"

"Yes, that's right. How did you know?"

"We have a lot of chokecherry trees at Iron Ridge; they grow all over the Upper Peninsula in fact. And yes, a promontory overlooks the lake near the house; and yes, the lake does wash away the sh.o.r.e. We have a serious erosion problem."

"Then it was Iron Ridge I saw in my dream."

"You're jumping to conclusions. Remember you heard me describe Iron Ridge that first day on the way to the airport, you knew my house is on Lake Superior, and the sh.o.r.eline in your dream could be anywhere. It could be in New York or even here in California."

"But what about the chokecherry tree?"

Jon shrugged. "You must have read the name and it stuck in your subconscious."

"Do you think all my dreams can be explained? Logically, I mean."

"I don't know. The young construction worker-what was his name? George? You say you knew he worked on a high-rise building. You must have thought about the danger of his falling. Your fear could have triggered your dream and when he fell you naturally believed you'd foreseen it."

"But the details. The superintendent standing next to me, his calling out. I didn't see the superintendent, actually, now that I think back, but I heard him in my dream. I want to believe what you're saying yet I'm not sure."

"Haven't you ever known someone who thought they foresaw an event when they really didn't? I remember my mother had a friend, an older woman who had a heart attack. 'I had this strange feeling the last time I saw her,' Mother told me after she heard of the attack. She'd never mentioned this feeling to anyone before. Later, after her friend died, Mother became convinced she'd had a premonition. People's minds work that way."

"What you're saying is that I thought I'd foreseen George's death while actually I didn't."

"No, I didn't say that exactly. You're certainly imaginative, but whether you have the power of precognition I don't know."

"Then you think I should have gone through the experiments at the Parapsychology Inst.i.tute?"

"No!" His reply came quick and sharp. "I don't. I don't ever want you to get mixed up with those people."

Lesley, taken aback, looked across the table at Jon's eyes glinting in the candlelight. He was angry, angrier than she'd ever seen him.

"From what you said-" Lesley began.

"I can see why you might have thought that." He was calm again, his voice conciliatory. "I believe psychic experiences are possible, as you know. I believe there are gifted persons and you, Lesley, may be one of them. If you are, you have an ability you must have been given for a reason. I don't think you should tamper with that gift by taking part in so-called scientific experiments. Instead you should try to understand and control your powers."

"Can I? By myself? Others know so much more than I do. You do; Craig Ritter does."

"No, those psychic investigators don't. I've seen their methods, their card tricks, their supposedly controlled experiments. Those techniques weren't meant to be used to measure psychic phenomena. What difference does it make whether a rat responds to an electric impulse? People aren't rats; they're human beings, their minds and their emotions often in a delicate balance.

"They don't understand the nature of psychic powers, these scientists, they expect you to be able to perform all of the time and if you can't, they mark you down as a fraud. Psychics are like artists. Can you measure Pica.s.so's greatness with a test? Psychic phenomena are imperfect at best. At least that's the way I see them. Lesley, I think you should stay away from the university."

"I didn't realize you felt so strongly. You needn't worry, I came away from there with the same opinion you have, though not for the same reasons. I don't intend to be tested. Mr. Ritter's att.i.tude made me angry because he'd made up his mind ahead of time."

"I'm sure he had. I'm sorry I lectured you, I'm afraid you hit on one of my pet peeves. And I do appreciate your telling me about your visions."

"I think of them as dreams."

"Dreams, then."

"You're the first person I've ever told."

He looked at her steadily and she thought he was about to speak but instead he pursed his lips and pushed away his empty plate. She sighed. If only his explanation of her dreams could be true, she thought.

The waitress brought each of them a fortune cookie and, as Lesley picked up hers, Jon watched with an antic.i.p.atory smile on his face.

"Wealth? Love? Travel?" he asked. "What will your future be?"

Lesley snapped the cookie between her fingers and held the slip of paper in the light from the candle. "Lesley," she read, "I love you very much. Will you marry me?" He had signed his name in bold, black script. Glancing at him, feeling herself blush, she saw the red-orange glow from the candle flickering on his face.

"I need you, Lesley," he said.

She reached across the table toward him and she knew he expected her to touch his face. Instead she took the cookie from his plate and, with unsteady fingers, broke it in two.

"For richer, for poorer," she pretended to read, "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. I will, Jon, I will."

Chapter Seven.

Lesley wrapped the carving of the little girl in a towel. They were in the bedroom of her apartment three weeks after Jon asked her to marry him.

"I don't think it's fragile," Jon said.

"She's my lucky charm; I wouldn't want anything to happen to her." After Lesley laid the carving in the suitcase beside the jewel box containing the opal, she shut the lid and snapped the lock. Jon carried the suitcase across the empty living room and placed it next to three others just inside the front door.

"That's the last of them," he said. "I'll start loading the car."

"What will our Michigan address be?"

"Marquette."

"No, our mailing address."

"Are you expecting someone to write? I thought you didn't have any relatives living?"

Lesley crossed the room and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. "Ummm," he said, taking her in his arms. She closed her eyes as the excitement rose in her. When he released her she stepped back, his hands still on her waist. What had they been talking about? she asked herself. Oh, yes, their new address.

"The hospital will mail my final paycheck," she told him. "Probably the last money I'll earn in a long time. Besides, some of the nurses at the hospital want to write and so will a few people I know back in Catskill."

"It's Rural Route 3, Marquette. The zip code is 49855."

Jon put one suitcase under his arm, picked up two others, and started down the outside stairs. After he was gone, Lesley took two cards from her purse. First she filled out the post office change-of-address form, then scrawled her new address on a postcard she had already addressed to the inst.i.tute at the university. After all, she told herself, I promised Craig Ritter. Jon won't mind, I'm not committing myself to anything, and we'll be in northern Michigan, over two thousand miles from here. There's no reason to tell Jon, though, she decided, remembering his tirade condemning psychic research.

While Jon carried her remaining suitcase to the car, Lesley made a final check of the rooms. She locked the front door and walked to the manager's apartment, feeling a momentary twinge of guilt when she left the two cards with him to be mailed.

She glanced around the court for the last time, glad to be leaving, then walked to Jon's maroon Buick. He had sold her Pinto. "If we need a second car we'll buy one in Michigan," he told her.

They drove north through California's golden-brown hills and valleys, crossed the Sierras to Carson City, where they were married on October 22, her birthday. As Lesley left the small chapel, her hand in Jon's, she looked up through the branches of the trees to the sun, high and bright, smiling at the omen.

Heading north again, they stopped at Virginia City to explore the old silver mines and the museums, their shoes tapping on the board sidewalks of the restored frontier town. "I want to write a history of the Upper Peninsula," Jon told her, "particularly about the Marquette area and the iron mining. I'll write this winter, to keep busy." They had agreed neither of them would work, at least until the following spring.

"We'll have enough to do," she said, squeezing his hand and leaning her head on his arm; "I'm teasing. I think that's a fine idea."

They followed Interstate 80 through Nevada to Utah and into Wyoming, stopping when they felt the urge to explore, spending a day in Salt Lake City, two in Cheyenne. On their last night in Wyoming they ate in front of a crackling fire, for the nights had turned cold. They slept late the next morning, Jon rising first to buy a newspaper and make coffee, serving her in bed.

He sat on the bed, leafing through the paper. "The stock market's down again," he said.

"Oh? Do you own stocks?"

"A few."

Lesley leaned on his shoulder, sipping her coffee while she watched him study the long columns of prices.

"Do you ever have a feeling about a company?" he asked in an off-hand manner. "Can you read an annual report, for instance, and sort of intuitively know something about the company's prospects for the next year?"

"No, never. I don't have hunches, or feelings as you call them. Only dreams, and they're almost all concerned with people, with men and women, not things."

"I wonder-" he said.

"What?"

"I was thinking about your opal. Whether it would have the same power for someone other than you." He tossed the paper onto a chair.

"I don't think so."

"Ready to go out for breakfast?" he asked and she put her coffee cup on the night table and pulled him down beside her, tousling his hair, and he kissed her, their bodies separated by the blankets-like bundling, she thought-then he pulled the blankets aside and drew her tight against him until she trembled in antic.i.p.ation, and they made love. Afterward she lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the water running in the shower, and she was content, happier than she had ever been before.

In Chicago they splurged, had dinner in a hotel dining room high above the city, afterward saw a road show of a musical comedy in a theater a few blocks from the Loop, and the next morning walked along the lake front where a light breeze blew Lesley's hair into her face. The sun s.h.i.+mmered from the smooth surface of the water.

"And the lake at Iron Ridge?" she asked. "Is it like this? Like Lake Michigan?"

"Something, but Superior's larger and farther north so it's colder."

"The water's calm today," she said.

"The Great Lakes are treacherous. Storms come up fast, you can't imagine how fast." He snapped his fingers. "Like that."

She remembered Mary, who had drowned in the lake and wondered if Jon was remembering too. She glanced at him but found his face impa.s.sive. The accident was ten years ago, she rea.s.sured herself. She took his arm, feeling the warmth of him. I love him so much, she thought. I'll help him build a new life.

After they drove across the Straits of Mackinac on the great many-spanned bridge to the Upper Peninsula, Jon slowed the car. "You're sure you won't change your mind?" he asked. "We still have time to call ahead and have the house cleaned."

"No. The road's been cleared and we'll have water and electricity, that's enough. It's more fun this way, more of an adventure, and I'll have something to do this winter, fixing up the house."

He pulled her to him, steering with one hand, kissed her neck and gently bit the lobe of her ear. "We'll have enough else to do," he said.

"Touche."

"Meaning touch?" He ran his fingers down the length of her arm and she laughed.

Soon they had left the towns along Lake Michigan behind and drove north into the forests. They spent the last night of their trip, of their honeymoon, in Marquette.

"I want to get to Iron Ridge as early as we can tomorrow," Jon said, "so we can have the whole day to air the house and see what we're going to have to bring in."

By seven in the morning they had eaten and were driving through Marquette, a city of hills, of old homes set back in tree-shaded yards, and of ore docks jutting into the lake. The closer they came to Iron Ridge, the quieter Jon became and, following several attempts at conversation, Lesley also grew silent.

Jon turned from the main highway onto a secondary road and then, a half hour after leaving Marquette, onto a hard-packed dirt drive. At the intersection Lesley deciphered the faded letters on the mailbox-HOLLISTER.

"Are we the only ones living on this road?" she asked.