I know what I should say, but it takes me several seconds to say it.
“She will need to be reunited with her mother.”
The clock in the foyer chimes half past six o’clock as I say this. Twilight has descended, and it will be followed by the heavy cloak of night. After we go to the police, everything will be different. The life I am currently leading will be over. I likely won’t have a place to live and certainly no means. The police might take Kat from me straightaway when they realize my marriage to Martin is bogus and that Kat’s mother still lives. They will take it upon themselves to transport Kat to Arizona. They will take that tortured child from me.
I can’t let that happen. She has already been through too much.
I should be the one to take her.
But I am going to need train fare and money for food. Maybe there is cash in the strongbox. Maybe...
I turn to Belinda.
“I think we need to carefully plan what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it. And I think we need to see what Martin has been hiding in the boiler room.”
She stares at me, with no idea of what I am talking about.
“Come with me.” I hurry out of the room and Belinda follows me. We cross the foyer into the kitchen, and there is sweet Kat at the butler’s table by the window, drawing pictures of birds and butterflies and coloring them with her wax crayons.For Baby, she has written on the tops of the pages.
I smile down on her and squeeze her shoulder. I lack the fortitude to speak to her just now, but she is immersed in her task as a big sister and doesn’t seem to notice. I head to the door that opens onto the stairway to the boiler room. I pull it open and lift my skirt as I take the steps.
“Close the door behind you,” I quietly instruct Belinda. I don’t want Kat following us down.
I flip on the electrical switch for the one incandescent bulb that hangs in the center of the low-ceilinged room. The wooden lid on the vault is closed and padlocked, but I grab the heavy wrench by the boiler that is used to loosen or tighten its valves. I raise it above my head and bring it down on the padlock and hinges, causing Belinda to gasp in surprise. It takes only a few blows for the padlock to skitter away, freed from the wooden planking of the lid, still locked. I lift the lid and rest it against the wall. Ten bottles of what I am sure is not hair tonic rest inside on the shelf Martin made. I reach for one, crack open its seal, and uncork it. I raise the bottle to my nose and catch the strong scent of vinegar.
I let the bottle fall to the ground. It breaks and Belinda startles backward in surprise. In the puddle of broken glass and vinegar are silt and dirt and bits of white rock. And then in the sallow light cast by the one bulb, a shimmering misshapen orb the size of a raisin appears in the spread of liquid and stony mush.
It gleams like the summer sun. Gold.
I look up at Belinda, who is staring wide-eyed at the luminous object on the wet floor.
“This is why he sought you out,” I say. “He wanted your father’s mine.”
Belinda raises her head to look at me. “But there’s nothing in the mine. It’s been abandoned for decades. There’s nothing there! My grandfather and father knew its every inch. There was nothing in it!”
I take out another bottle and drop it to the ground, and it shatters. Two more pea-sized shiny orbs appear in the vinegary puddle of silt and stones, both hugged in the wet embrace of rippling, crumbling white rock. I draw out a third and repeat. Another misshapen lump appears, this one the size of a small, halved lima bean, with bits of stone clinging to it.
I bend down and poke at the creamy white stone wrapping itself around the golden bean. Part of the white stone sloughs off as I touch it. I lift the stone-crusted bean out of the vinegar and stand up straight, holding the golden thing to the light and looking at the strange rocky mush disintegrating all around it. “What is that white stuff?”
Belinda is staring at it, too. “It’s quartz. Sometimes... sometimes gold ore that is found underground is encased in quartz. My father told me the acid in vinegar can dissolve quartz crystals. It’s how he tested rocks he sometimes found in the mine. It’s how lots of miners test what they find. Real gold won’t be harmed by the acid, but other minerals that look like gold, like... like mica or pyrite, will dissolve or become damaged after soaking in vinegar. But not gold.”
I look up at her. “Still believe there’s nothing in your mine?”
“But... but how could I not know? I would’ve known!”
“You told me earlier you didn’t like the mine, that you thought it was dangerous. That you never went down there.”
“Because I didn’t! I don’t! Itisdangerous!”
“But you also said that on the day your father died he brought you to the mine because he wanted to show you something. But then he fell. What if he found gold after all? What if he’d found something before that day that looked like gold and he’d had someone verify it to be sure? What ifthatwas what he’d been going to show you? Quartz in the cave with gold running through it, and which he knew for certain was gold because he’d had it verified?”
Belinda ponders this for a moment. “How would James... Martin... how would he have known about it?”
“That doesn’t matter right now! Maybe somebody talked at an assayer’s office about a man from San Rafaela bringing in some freshly mined gold and Martin overheard it. It doesn’t matter how he knew. What matters is he was going to steal this from you. It’s yours. And he was going to take it right out from under you, using his fake marriage to you as proof he has joint ownership of your property.”
I don’t mention that Martin might have just as effortlessly decided to kill Belinda when he had tapped into the last of the ore in the cave and was finished with the ruse of being her husband. I also don’t mention how easy it is to imagine that Martin was secretly inside the mine the day Belinda’s father died, that Martin pushed him into the shaft when the opportunity presented itself, and then dashed away when Belinda ran for help. She perhaps can’t see him yet as a heartless beast, but it is getting easier by the minute for me to see him as one.
While Belinda reconciles her mind to the truth of why Martin wooed her into marriage, I break open the rest of the bottles. Each one contains silty, decomposing quartz and golden bits. There were more bottles in the past. I’ve no idea where they are. Martin made it seem like he had sold them on his route, but now I am certain he has squirreled them away somewhere or cashed them and deposited the money in a bank account in James Bigelow’s name or Percy Glover’s or someone else’s entirely. I grab an empty canning jar off a rack by the boiler and scoop up the nuggets, careful not to cut myself on the shards of glass.
